THE PEACE 



AND 



AMERICA 



HUGO V1UNS TERBERG 




Class _IL2__e_ 

Book a L_ 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE PEACE 
AND AMERICA 



BOOKS BY HUGO MUNSTERBERG 

Psychology and Life 

pp. 28b, Boston, i8gi) 

Grundzuge der Psychologie 

PP- 5^5, Leipzig, iqoo 

American Traits 

PP. 2 3Si Boston, iqo2 

Die Amerikaner 

pp. jo2 and 34q, Berlin, iqo4 (Rev. iqis) 

Principles of Art Education 

pp. 118, New York, 1905 

The Eternal Life 

pp. 72, Boston, IQ05 

Science and Idealism 

pp. 71, Boston, iqob 

Philosophic der Werte 

pp. 48b, Leipzig, /907 

On the Witness Stand 

//. 2bq. New York, iqo8 

Aus Deutsch-Amerika 

pp. 24.5, Berlin, iqoq 

The Eternal Values 

pp. 43b, Boston, iqoq 

Psychotherapy 

PP. 401, New York, iqoq 

Psychology and the Teacher 

pp. 330, New York, iqzo 

American Problems 

//. 220, New York, iqio 

Psychologie und Wirtschaftsleben 

pp. iq2, Leipzig, iqi2 

Vocation and Learning 

pp. 28q, St. Louis, iqi2 

Psychology and Industrial Efficiency 

pp. 321, Boston, iqi3 

American Patriotism 

pp. 2b 2, New York, iqi3 

Grundzuge der Psychotechnik 

//• 7t>7, Leipzig, iqi4 

Psychology and Social Sanity 

pp. 320, New York, iqi4 

Psychology. General and Applied 

New York, iqi4 

The War and America 

New York, 1914 

The Peace and America 

New York, iqij 



THE PEACE 
AND AMERICA 



BY 

HUGO MUNSTERBERG 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

1915 



Us* 



3 
11 



Copyright, 1915, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Printed in the United States of America 



APR -6 1915 
©CI.A398242 



4" 



<2 
a; 



TO 

MY BROTHERS 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Peace 1 

II. The So-Called Facts 22 

III. The Highest Values 57 

IV. William II 87 

V. German Kultur 119 

VI. England 158 

VII. Letters 209 

VIII. Tomorrow 225 



THE 
PEACE AND AMERICA 



PEACE 

When the war with all its horrors broke 
into our peaceful life, the quiet ground of 
our existence seemed suddenly crumbling. 
"We were dazed by the terrors of the battle- 
field; we were bewildered by the gigantic 
earthquake that was shaking our social globe. 
How did it begin ? Who is responsible ? Who 
is to be blamed? Who are the leaders in the 
fight f Where do the masses stand? Every- 
one asked the pregnant questions, and every- 
one answered them in his own way. In my 
summer vacation at the New England sea- 
shore I answered them on the pages of a per- 
sonal diary. I wrote down my reflections 
throughout the first month of the war and 
published those records of the first weeks as 
a small volume, "The War and America" — it 
was the first war book in any country. 

1 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

Now almost six months have passed with 
battles the like of which mankind has not seen 
or dreamt. Never were six months longer, as 
man's mind measures time by its events, and 
never before in the history of the world have 
a thousand millions of men waited so eagerly 
for news from hour to hour. And life around 
us has changed in those six months, and we 
have all changed, and we see the world with 
new eyes. Even the war itself means to us 
today something different. How it came 
about — the question today seems stale and 
forgotten ! How it can come to an end — that 
is the problem which overshadows all our 
thoughts and feelings! Six months have 
made us all sympathizers and sufferers and 
mourners : we pray for delivery, we long for 
peace. 

In this mood I open the pages of my diary 
again. When I wrote the first time, I looked 
backward to the causes of the war: now I 
look forward to the end of the war, and be- 
yond it. But as in the war book so now in 
this peace book I do not speak with the am- 
bition of a historical scholar. I do not aim 
toward an objective form. I feel that a re- 

2 



PEACE 

view of the events from the angle of personal 
experience is the only kind of writing about 
the war today which carries its excuse in it- 
self. The time for impersonal work and sci- 
entific methods has not come yet. On these 
first pages I may say again : a story of mem- 
ories and impressions, of fears and hopes, has 
today more inner truth than any history of 
the struggle apparently written with a his- 
torian's coolness. I do not wish and do not 
pretend to be scholarly — I cannot promise 
anything but to be sincere. I do not want to 
convince anyone by arguments, and still less 
do I want to persuade. I want only to be a 
witness for the truth as I see it. I want to 
be a witness because I feel in the depths of 
my soul the need of professing my faith and 
my conviction. The human aspect of war and 
peace fills my heart and head, not the scien- 
tific aspect of academic history. In the last 
twenty-four hours I have received the news 
of the death of three personal friends: a 
young talented psychologist with whom I had 
planned some common research, a brilliant 
poet who had sent me his latest volume of 
verses as late as after the war's beginning, 

3 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

and a young minister who spent Christmas 
under my roof last winter. All three have 
fallen in the field in the fight for their coun- 
try. That is personal truth; that is human 

truth ; that is eternal truth. 

* * # # 

Six months have passed. They were too 
short to make us understand the new ghastly 
reality. The world of our cherished habits 
has gone to ruin. Friendship has turned into 
hatred. Six months are too short fully to 
feel what it means. Yet the six months were 
too long for our anguish, for our terrible ten- 
sion. The world tragedy is too gigantic: a 
wave of emotion swells, a cry from the depths, 
a prayer — may peace be near! Peace — we 
had it, and we hardly knew it. We do not 
think of the fresh air we breathe and of the 
sunlight which floods about us and of the 
health of our body until pure air or light or 
strength are failing. Now the air is filled 
with miasmas and about us is darkness and 
our strength is broken; and suddenly we 
know how glorious and inspiring it was to 
breathe and to see and to feel the peace of 
the civilized world. It was not only a peace 

4 



PEACE 

which protected the house and the body; it 
was a peace which ennobled the mind. It in- 
spired every soul with good will; the whole 
world with its fascinating wealth of national 
civilizations was everybody's native land. 
Truly he did not deserve his birthright who 
was not willing to learn, gratefully to learn 
the teachings of any land, to love the beauty 
grown on any soil, to admire the great and 
the deep and the loyal and the pious in any 
people. Surely the most cruel devastation 
which the world war has caused is that this 
good will has been poisoned and the faith 
and the confidence has been swept away by 
hot streams of blood. Passionate hatred has 
taken possession of the sober and quiet pil- 
grim of yesterday. The rifle bullets kill men 
of flesh and blood, but the thoughts that curse 
bring thousandfold greater miseries. 

Can we hope for peace from peoples who 
breathe hatred? To force the enemy to his 
knees is the longing which burns down every 
thought of truth and understanding. Mil- 
lions have given their youth : can any nation 
on the battlefield be expected to leave the 
trenches today! Would it not be bowed with 

5 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

shame, feeling that all the sacrifices of life 
were thrown away? At the Marne and the 
Vistula the flag of peace can never be un- 
furled. It would be riddled by the volleys of 
both armies. No : the belligerents cannot be 
expected to hasten the peace. To bring back 
mankind to the joy of harmonious life was 
the one sacred mission with which the spirit 
of history had intrusted the neutrals. But 
Holland or Spain or Switzerland or Denmark 
or Sweden do not possess the strength or the 
authority to take the lead. Every one of 
those lands shares its frontiers with some of 
the nations at war, and these common boun- 
daries draw them more or less into the strug- 
gle. Only one nation was blessed by perfect 
freedom from entanglement, only one nation 
had the strength and the economic independ- 
ence and the international power and the 
moral right and the historic duty to become 
the one truly neutral arbiter and helper : the 
United States of America. 

What has become of this noble mission? 
How has the land used the occasion of world 
import? Six months have passed. Can it 
be denied that they have weakened the noble 

6 



PEACE 

hopes with which we friends of peace all over 
the world looked confidently toward the stars 
and stripes as the banner of honorable peace? 
In deepest sorrow we feel that a deed of over- 
whelming greatness might have crowned the 
age and that instead of it the small struggle 
of the day with all its pettiness and its short- 
sightedness has wasted the glorious hour. 

Where do we stand? The whole nation 
prays for peace, and yet tolerates — no, smil- 
ingly approves — the steady stream of war 
supplies from America to Europe. Two days 
after England declared war, we hear from 
the best authority, she had engaged the total 
output of an American manufacturer whose 
machinery was an important part of the shell- 
making business. A factory in Connecticut 
received orders for twenty-five million dol- 
lars' worth of cartridges, which would mean 
five hundred million rounds of ammunition. 
Three million American rifles were ordered, 
ten million American horseshoes. Through 
a single agency in America more than a hun- 
dred and fifty million dollars' worth of war 
supplies were placed recently. From the cen- 
ter of American business life we hear the bold 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

prophecy : "The one country that the warring 
world must turn to for supplies is the United 
States, and that in increasing measure. Or- 
ders for three hundred million dollars' war 
goods already received must be duplicated 
several times." Can a more gruesome irony 
on America's wish for peace be imagined! 
From a thousand American pulpits at the be- 
ginning of the war the accusations resounded 
that the Krupps and the Creuzots and the 
gunmakers all over Europe were the true 
secret springs of this world controversy ; and 
now we must see America the great center 
of the supply. The one nation which stands 
outside the fight so that no patriotism ex- 
cuses the eagerness to furnish the deadly 
weapons is drawn by the commercial lure 
into the very midst of the horrors. 

We all had believed that the America of 
today sought its glory in its thrilling appeal 
to humanity for peace on earth. The one 
great test finally came. If the appeal really 
arose from the depth of the nation's soul, the 
bugle call of the European declaration of war 
would have been answered by a solemn pledge 
that not a rifle, not a shell, not a sword shall 

8 



PEACE 

leave the peaceful shores of this country. 
The stream of blood would have been stopped 
so much earlier and the moral impression 
would have been tremendous. The profits of 
a few manufacturers weighed more heavily 
than the prayers of the masses. Nobody 
doubts that the international laws permit this 
anti-pacificist stand, but many have wished 
that laws higher than those of the law books 
might have appealed to the conscience of the 
nation. Congress did prevent the export of 
arms to Mexico. And was not the calcula- 
tion anyhow probably wrong? Even if the 
ledger was to be the ultimate argument, 
might it not have been more farsighted to 
exert every effort for an early peace, as the 
outburst of economic energies after the war 
will surpass hundredfold in value the sad 
trade of the gunmakers during the war. 

But America disregarded her historic mis- 
sion as peacemaker not only by sending 
munitions of war to the European battle- 
fields, but much more by sacrificing the noble 
role of the non-partisan. America is not in 
conflict with any nation. It is officially neu- 
tral, and everybody ought to have lived up 

2 9 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

to the obligation to which President Wilson 
has given such convincing expression. Very 
few, to be sure, have claimed that it is wrong 
to remain neutral. But too many have in- 
terpreted neutrality as the duty to play the 
judge, forgetting that as soon as this func- 
tion of judgeship is emphasized the doors are 
wide open for any partiality and the neutral 
spirit evaporates. What would have been 
needed in order to be really neutral would 
have been an unprejudiced entering into the 
motives, thoughts and feelings of each of the 
warring nations. As soon as that had been 
successfully done, the result would have been 
necessary and clear. America would have 
recognized that every one of the peoples at 
war proceeded in obedience to its world task, 
every one fulfilled exactly that which it con- 
ceived as its moral duty, every one was in- 
spired by high national ideals, every one was 
deeply convinced that the fullest moral right 
was on its side. From such a point of view, 
the question of guilt would have become 
meaningless. Nobody was to blame, nobody 
was in the wrong, because whoever fulfills 
what he sees as his duty sincerely, loyally 

10 



PEACE 

and with self-sacrifice is eternally right. 
There can be no higher standard. 

Instead of such loftiness and ideal neu- 
trality we have seen the overwhelming ma- 
jority of the nation rushing into the wildest 
accusation of Germany's turpitude. The his- 
torians of a later day will certainly see much 
which explains and almost excuses this hys- 
terical excitement against Germany and Aus- 
tria. They will point out that the mind of 
the people necessarily saw everything dis- 
torted as soon as sharp prejudices had been 
formed, and that the outer conditions of the 
first three or four weeks of the war almost 
forced these prejudices on the country. At 
the start the cables had been cut and in those 
decisive weeks in which the first opinions 
were shaped every piece of news had the 
stamp of the English censor and the spirit 
of English hatred toward Germany. Ger- 
many became the defendant, and by the mas- 
ter stroke of English diplomacy American 
feelings of indignation were whipped up. 
They overwhelmed even the traditional sense 
of fairness of those who under normal condi- 
tions would never have hesitated to sympa- 

11 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

thize with the weaker side when seven nations 
fell upon two. As soon as .England had suc- 
ceeded in presenting the issue with English 
lights and shades, the case was decided in 
spite of any evidence to the contrary. It was 
a perfect psychological circle. The news- 
papers had shaped the opinion by the one- 
sidedness of the only news which reached 
them ; this news stirred the wrath of the peo- 
ple against Central Europe; and as soon as 
the masses had swept with all their might 
into the camp of the Allies, the newspapers 
were forced to adjust the whole attitude to 
the emotion of their readers. The headlines 
and the editorials became stronger than any 
wireless messages of German defense. Every 
sheet stirred the rage of the crowd and when 
the rage swelled the headlines grew. As in a 
dynamo magnetism and electricity reenforce 
each other, papers and readers worked them- 
selves mutually into a state of mind in which 
all sober arguments were necessarily inhib- 
ited and in which the most indifferent spec- 
tator was dragged into the senseless bitter- 
ness of the hour. 

The historians will explain it all, and they 

12 



PEACE 

■will faithfully report that soon the better 
sense of the nation awoke and that suddenly 
no one really understood how this uncritical 
passion took hold of the sober nation. It will 
remind them how a few years before a mighty 
orator shouted through the land: "You shall 
not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold," 
and how half of the country went wild with 
an anti-gold rage until the nation suddenly 
shook it off and hardly understood how all 
the sound arguments for the gold standard 
could have been ignored. Again we heard 
the same voices proclaim: "You shall not 
crucify mankind upon a cross of militarism," 
and again the appealing phrase bewildered 
the people and made them forget the funda- 
mental facts of international history. But 
whatever the future may bring as explana- 
tion and as excuse, today the fact stands un- 
doubted that the American people has neg- 
lected its great mission of being the truly im- 
partial arbiter of the world. Never was a 
more tremendous task before the country. It 
is sad beyond words that the great duty was 
pulled down into the petty sphere of journal- 
istic wrangling. History raised a world ques- 

13 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

tion, and it was answered with the narrowness 
of ward politics. 

Nor was this one-sidedness which destroyed 
America's right to the seat of the umpire 
confined to the martial words of speak- 
ers and writers. As was to be feared, even 
the best will and the bravest efforts of the 
noble helmsman could hardly keep the ship 
of state true to its course as long as the sails 
were filled by the ill wind that profits nobody. 
From the first day when America was forced 
to be satisfied with the news which the Eng- 
lish censor permitted, the American nation 
has suffered from the arbitrary egotism of 
England. American trade under the Ameri- 
can flag to neutral ports has been interfered 
with by unheard-of methods. The list of con- 
traband has been expanded according to Eng- 
lish whim. American passports have been 
neglected. American mailbags have been de- 
stroyed. English warships have hovered 
around New York harbor. America's pro- 
tests have been dealt with as high-handedly 
as America's commerce. And yet no more 
energetic resistance has been insisted upon 
because the average American seems willing 

14 



PEACE 

to tolerate any arrogance of the Allies if only 
Germany can be brought to its knees. The 
question is not whether this or that single 
act can be interpreted by lawyers' skill as 
perhaps allowable according to some obscure 
precedent, nor is it the question whether per- 
fect legal evidence can be supplied of the de- 
struction of the thousands and thousands of 
American letters, or of the other English in- 
terferences. It is enough that we all know 
that far too much has happened which the 
American nation would never have endured 
and would have felt as a humiliation if public 
opinion were not swayed by the unneutral will 
to aid England and its allies throughout this 
war. 

Through a century and a half England has 
never forgotten the rebellion of its colonies, 
but even many an Anglo-Saxon American has 
feared in these days that the United States 
have begun to forget their Declaration of In- 
dependence. They had solemnly dissolved 
the political bonds with England. They 
wanted to be to every nation enemies in war, 
in peace friends. They are in peace with the 
nations with which England is at war; and 

15 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

yet many a German has felt that the silent 
help of the Americans has become more dan- 
gerous than the open enmity of the Japanese 
allies. It was a cause of bitter regret to the 
German nation which has ceaselessly aimed 
toward cordial friendship with America. It 
would gladly have trusted the American peo- 
ple to be the umpire who brings honorable 
peace. No greater disappointment has come 
to the fatherland than the sad news that the 
American people has decided otherwise by 
fostering the cause of Germany's enemies. 
Was the game really worth the candle! Even 
if all the arguments against Germany had 
been as true as every German knows that they 
are not, would not the American people have 
remained in a loftier historic position if it 
had left to the belligerents on both sides the 
sincere confidence that Columbia stood as a 
symbol of fairness, of impartiality, of peace? 
The mellow judiciousness of Joseph H. 
Choate, once America's ambassador to Eng- 
land, the sturdy sympathizer with all that is 
noble in England, the representative of true 
Americanism, spoke the significant word. He 
said with regard to Germany and England: 

16 



PEACE 

"It is a life and death struggle between two 
mighty powers, each entitled to the respect 
and admiration of the onlooking world." And 
again : "The terrible contest is maintained on 
both sides not only with equal valor and with 
equal vigor, but with equal conscientiousness 
and equally lofty motives ..." How won- 
derful it would have been if this spirit of his- 
toric understanding had filled the neutral 
world. 

The American people has not only frus- 
trated the hopes for early peace by its export 
of munitions and has not only rejected by its 
words and its actions the role of the impartial 
peacemaker; it has suddenly threatened the 
traditional peace within its own borders. 
Since the war began millions of American 
citizens have to suffer agonies hardly less 
cruel than those of the battlefield. Millions 
who honor Germany and Austria as the lands 
of their fathers feel humiliated and attacked 
by the passionate unfairness with which 
American public opinion hurls its insults 
against England's enemy. They feel as if 
here in their own land they were forced into 
social concentration camps. This is no longer 

17 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

a mere conflict of opinion such as any national 
election may carry with it. This brings the 
bitterness of inner warfare such as the coun- 
try happily has not witnessed for half a cen- 
tury: millions of citizens to whom equal 
rights were promised are degraded — they are 
stamped as descendants of barbarian coun- 
tries, as sympathizers with an unholy cause, 
as defenders of vandalism and crime. 

They have lived here for one generation or 
two or three with the feeling of safety and 
trust. They know that they have given their 
best energies and their heart's blood for the 
honor and progress of their beloved Ameri- 
can country, and now they feel themselves 
treated as unwelcome intruders. As faithful 
American citizens they were happy over the 
cordial friendship between America and the 
German lands ; they enjoyed the respect and 
admiration which the whole country pro- 
fessed for German culture and German mate- 
rial development, for the German nation and 
its leader. No one of them had imagined 
that a few months could destroy all these 
treasures of good will and reverse everything 
which long had been taken for granted. Never 

18 



PEACE 

has greater grief come to the Americans of 
German descent ; and hundreds of thousands 
who had almost forgotten their German blood 
have been stirred up by these spiritual atro- 
cities. 

They did not dream of any help which 
America might bring to the German side : but 
they did not imagine either that here in their 
country which they loved, their feelings of 
natural sympathy with the home of their fa- 
thers would be trampled down. Many an 
American whose parents came to these shores 
from German lands feels like a somnambulist 
who climbs in his sleep to a dangerous height, 
who suddenly awakes and sees beneath him 
abysses of which he had been unaware. 
Thousands of social ties had connected him 
with his surroundings. America had never 
been to him a land of the English. It was 
to him the glorious land in which the most 
enterprising men of all races had blended 
into a new people, in which the memories of 
all, the memories of the English as of the 
Irish, of the Dutch as of the Swedish, of the 
Germans as of the Poles, of the Austrians as 
of the Italians, were held in common respect 

19 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

and where only lie was to be despised who felt 
ashamed of his fathers. That was the spirit 
in which he educated his children and made 
them love the American soil with a heart full 
of pride in all which the Germans of earlier 
generations had contributed to its harvests. 
Suddenly he sees those social ties cut, sees 
himself and his children among strangers 
whose ill will pierces his heart and makes 
him doubt whether the good will of the past 
was sincere. Few have a clear idea how end- 
lessly many true tragedies have been brought 
into the homes of loyal Americans of Ger- 
man descent. 

What ought they to have done? Would 
they be worth their salt if they denied their 
German blood in order that they might fol- 
low the band wagon and yell with the crowd? 
Some of the best have said with ringing voice 
that they have spent their life in this country 
but will leave it when the war is over, as they 
do not wish to be intruders in a hostile commu- 
nity, and that they may forgive but never for- 
get the cruel wrong which was done to them. 
But of course they will be few compared with 
the millions who are to stay here and will 

20 



PEACE 

have to make the best of it. The task of the 
hour is rather to tie again the threads which 
have been cut. The days of hatred will, after 
all, go by; the world peace which America 
has failed to bring will come from victories 
or from ruins, but it will come, and the social 
peace among American fellow-countrymen 
will follow. Yet after the torment of these 
nightmare months one duty lies nearest to 
those who have not lost calm judgment and 
sober will. We must ask earnestly : what were 
the deeper underlying sources of this disas- 
trous misunderstanding? Why were we so 
hopelessly torn asunder? If the time is out 
of joint it cannot be set right again until the 
true causes of our war of minds are fearlessly 
analyzed and clearly seen. The truth alone 
will make us free from strife. To under- 
stand our misunderstanding is the only thing 
which we can contribute today toward a last- 
ing peace. 






II 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 



"But do not let us quarrel any more. . . . 
I am grown peaceful as old age to-night." 
I ask again: why did we misunderstand one 
another so persistently! There is a time 
when all the wrangling of the lawyers with 
their bolstered technicalities and strained 
precedents may be in order. But there ought 
to be other times when we might forget the 
pinpricks and the triumphant poses and 
settle down for a quiet word from man to 
man. It is so easy to find the common 
ground on which all misunderstanding must 
disappear and where we can get rid of all the 
unfairness and antipathy, of the blindness of 
partisanship and the quarrelsome emotions. 
Nothing is needed but to stick to the solid 
facts as we find them and judge them by the 

22 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

highest standards of humanity. The facts 
are the rockbed of our life experience, and 
the ideals of humanity are high above all 
national narrowness and racial sympathy. 
If we rely on the facts and on the moral laws, 
we must be of one heart and of one conviction, 
whether we came with the Mayflower to the 
inhospitable, or with the Kaiser Wilhehn II 
to the hospitable, shores. 

But there's the rub. Are the standards of 
humanity really ever independent of national 
traditions'? Are not the highest ideals 
shaped by racial consciousness? Can we 
really hope for a common result when we 
silently take it for granted that the loftiest 
ideals must be the same for all mankind, and 
practically measure by a different standard 
in every country? But before we scrutinize 
the ideals which must help us to grade the 
facts, can we at least rely on the common 
ground of the facts? What are facts but 
starting-points of disputes? Is there any- 
thing more unreliable than the so-called facts ? 
Is not that material of outside happenings 
thoroughly molded and shaped by our will 
and thought? Goethe says — if I may be 

23 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

pardoned for quoting a source from a bellig- 
erent side even in this peaceful reflection — 
"The chief point is to understand that every 
fact already involves a theory." Whenever 
mankind has focused its attention on the 
problem of what we really know, it has al- 
ways recognized that the only certainty of 
knowledge lies in our own inner actions and 
never in the outer facts. But there is no 
need of rising to the heights of philosophy; 
we may remain in the valleys of triviality, 
and yet agree that we have a pitiful case 
when we simply appeal to the facts. 

Somewhere over in Europe men have con- 
ferred or men have fought, men have tri- 
umphed or have suffered, men have been 
heroes or men have been devils : what is the 
chance that the same facts come to each of 
as? The very first obstacle is one which is 
most obvious, as it lies on the surface. The 
facts become modified and remolded by those 
who observe and report them. Some might 
say bluntly that the eyewitnesses and the re- 
porters have lied. But that is not the point 
at all. I do not think that wilful falsehood 
and offhand lying play any important role in 

24 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

the reporting, for "I am grown peaceful as 
old age to-night." And yet I have no doubt 
the unintentional distortion may at any time 
reshape the facts until no one can recognize 
the truth in the twisted stories. If here in 
America the material which is served to us in 
our breakfast paper has undergone this re- 
molding essentially through anti-German in- 
fluences, this is only the chance result of the 
actual situation. If the Eussians had suc- 
ceeded in breaking through Silesia and were 
standing today in Brandenburg, and if the 
French had taken Alsace and were today dev- 
astating Thuringia, and if the English had 
reached Westphalia, and if the cables from 
Great Britain had been cut, but those from 
Emden were still alive, we should probably 
have the reverse of the present situation in 
our European news. The German and Aus- 
trian imagination would have run wild and 
the lingering desire to influence the independ- 
ent world would have brought havoc in spite 
of the best intentions. I suppose the German 
press would have. been less successful, be- 
cause it is less trained in team work. It has 
been said that there are only three firmly or- 

3 25 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

ganized establishments in the world : the Ro- 
man church, the American Standard Oil Com- 
pany, and the German army. I think the 
press of England does not stand behind them. 
The German and the American press cannot 
compete there. 

This unintentional distortion may have 
many psychological shades. The character- 
istic condition is that all who report stand 
under autosuggestive influence which makes 
them fully believe what they write down, and 
these illusory elements may turn some most 
harmless occurrence into the wildest absur- 
dity. The good man who assured his readers 
in a New England paper that he saw with his 
own eyes in the beginning of August at Bran- 
denburger Thor in Berlin how twenty-eight 
Socialists were publicly shot down by a firing 
squad was evidently perfectly sincere. Hun- 
dreds have reported that they have seen with 
their own eyes the funeral of the German 
Crown Prince, and still more have seen the 
Russian army corps in England which had 
boldly come from Archangel on its way to 
Belgium. How often did we hear of the 
suicide of General von Emmich and of Gen- 

26 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

eral von Kluck? How often did we hear at 
first from observers who surely believed what 
they wrote that Berlin was like a cemetery, 
that in the German cities no men were seen, 
only women in mourning, and that the food 
prices brought starvation near. Yet meat 
and eggs and milk and the rest in Berlin and 
Hamburg have never been so high-priced as 
in New York and Boston at the same time; 
the theaters and concerts have gone on as 
usual; cafes have been crowded; and there 
have never been so few unemployed in the 
country because many industries are flourish- 
ing as never before. No Russian soldier has 
touched England, and the German Crown 
Prince gives vivid interviews to the American 
associated press. In the meantime, to be 
sure, the German Crown Prince had plund- 
ered a French castle in which he stayed for a 
while just to fill carloads of trunks with the 
costly vases and paintings of his hostess 
whose appealing letters went through the 
French and American papers. It took quite 
a while before the French acknowledged that 
it was a slight mistake, in that the Crown 
Prince had never been in that castle at all and 

27 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

that when the German officers who did stay 
there left it, not the least damage had been 
done and not the least loss occurred, and 
only afterward a mirror was broken. And 
from this level of mild modification with 
partly involuntary additions of vivid imagi- 
nation, the reports sink lower and lower to 
the point where we readers should deceive 
ourselves if we did not have a certain suspic- 
ion that the writers after all intend to deceive 
us. 

The psychologically most dangerous re- 
molding must result when the report has re- 
peatedly been transmitted. We psychologists 
know such effects quite well from exact ex- 
periments on the formation of rumors. If 
a picture is shown and the spectator tells an- 
other man what he has seen in it, and he in 
turn tells it to a second, and he reports it 
orally to a third the next day, and so on for 
a week, the seventh man gives an account 
which has slight similarity to the starting- 
point. This danger must rapidly grow — ex- 
periment proves this, too — when the minds 
suffer from a common excitement by which a 
wrong emotional accent falsifies the reports 

28 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

received. Finally, the laboratory experi- 
ments have shown that women and above all 
youthful persons are especially liable to such 
illusions, which grow like an avalanche. In 
a school experiment a few words of rebuke 
which a visiting superintendent of schools 
spoke at nine o'clock to a boy had grown by 
twelve o'clock in transmission through four 
different school classes into a cruel corporal 
punishment. The social psychologists of the 
future will hardly need any such special ex- 
periments to prove these laws of growing dis- 
tortion. They can find sufficient material in 
most of the well examined cases of atrocities 
in the European war. The typical form is 
this. A detailed report of a paper in West- 
ern Switzerland told how the Germans in a 
French village had cut off the right hands 
of all the boys and girls. An American was 
so indignant over this atrocity of the Ger- 
mans that he made up his mind that he must 
examine the circumstances. His first jour- 
ney was to the writer who had signed the 
article and who had said that he had it from 
an eyewitness. It was found that the gentle- 
man to whom he referred was a well-known 

29 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

man in Geneva. He traveled to Geneva and 
found out that the man had told the story in 
a much milder form, speaking only of twenty 
boys and girls, but that he himself had not 
been the eyewitness but had heard it from his 
chauffeur. A searching conversation with 
the chauffeur, who had in the meantime gone 
to another town, gave the result that he had 
it through a letter from that village but that 
the letter contained reference only to one 
single boy. The examination was carried 
further, and it was found that the whole basis 
was that this one boy had lost his hand by 
an accident long before the Germans had 
entered the village. 

I say frankly that probably most of the 
atrocity stories with which the German news- 
papers were crowded for a while have a sim- 
ilar illusory origin. At least from a scientific 
point of view it is most improbable that sol- 
diers of any of the Western European 
armies have committed criminal atrocities. 
If the civil population of villages which have 
been devastated by the horrible necessities of 
the war sometimes lost their moral instincts, 
it may be more easily understood. It would 

30 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

be absurd to measure even the most fiendish 
crimes in such dazing conditions by the stand- 
ards of peace. And finally, criminals are 
mixed into decent nations everywhere. I re- 
gret that the Germans reprinted in autograph 
the letter found on an English officer from 
his sister who writes that she wants to become 
a nurse because she hopes that then she might 
kill a few Germans; such perverse thoughts 
are pathological and do not characterize the 
people. 

I suppose that a German prisoner in Rus- 
sia wrote an open inspected letter home in 
which he said for the censor's sake that he 
was well treated and well nourished, and in 
a postscript he said that they ought to pre- 
serve the Russian stamp for his stamp col- 
lection. As his family knew that he had 
none, they had a suspicion and removed the 
stamp carefully and found below it the words 
"bad treatment, miserable food." The story 
which has reached me in this form seems pos- 
sible and almost probable. But it is a fact 
that I have heard this same stamp story from 
at least twelve different sources, referring 
not only to prisoners in Russia but also in 

31 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

France and England and to civilians in con- 
centration camps. In each case those who 
have informed me were sure that their wit- 
nesses were themselves the receivers of those 
letters or cards. Moreover the stories cov- 
ered by the foreign stamp became more and 
more gruesome. One wrote that he was 
starving, the next that one eye had been 
gouged out, another that his feet had been cut 
off. Moreover the stories grow in length, 
and not a few must have written whole edi- 
torials about the wretched situations in 
French and Russian camps under the cover 
of the harmless stamp. The idea is so bril- 
liant that it has spread to the other side. 
English families have received similar vivid 
descriptions of German camps under German 
stamps, and there, too, the stories have been 
as lengthy as if the German postage stamp 
were the size of the London Times. 

But the task of getting common ground 
becomes still much harder because we do not 
read the same papers, we do not receive the 
same letters, we do not meet the same people, 
as sources of our information. If the one 
relies on the New York Herald and the other 

32 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

is daily supplied with the news by the New 
Yorker Staats-Zeitung, if the one has his 
friends in England and the other receives his 
decisive impressions from letters written in 
the German trenches, they are surrounded by 
different atmospheres, the available ideas 
with which they have to think are so differ- 
ently selected that they soon cannot possibly 
understand each other. They speak two dif- 
ferent languages. Every single bit of infor- 
mation, every single episode impressed on 
the memory may be entirely true, and yet 
all together the one's picture of the war ap- 
pears from the standpoint of the other a great 
caricature. 

But this is only the beginning of the story. 
Even if no one altered and distorted the 
events, and if they were not selected by the 
chances of personal surroundings, are the 
so-called facts in themselves clear? Do the 
actors themselves distinctly know all about 
the aims and motions of their minds? This 
is a much subtler difficulty, which is so easily 
overlooked; and yet the discussions about 
the diplomatic history of the war most ear- 
nestly suggest such an inquiry. Here I 

33 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

really cannot forget the lessons of homemade 
psychology. The students of the mind know 
how misleading is the popular idea that our 
mental life is controlled by one will power 
which autocratically decides all our inner 
steps. We have not one will, but thousands 
of volitions ; and these do not flow out of one 
central impulse but are the products of the 
many ideas and feelings in our mind. We 
deceive ourselves so easily by a superficial 
pseudopsychology. If in ordinary life a tri- 
vial question is brought before us, we answer 
it and talk with our friend about this and 
that, and if we are asked to analyze what 
happened, we readily imagine that our will 
has consciously chosen the arguments and the 
replies and the words which we used. But 
this is a fiction. Those words did not come 
to our consciousness before they were ut- 
tered ; those replies resulted simply from the 
ideas which the question awakened; they 
came of themselves, each related to a little 
group of ideas without much censorship from 
above. 

In any complex social situation different 
groups of ideas and moods lead to very di- 

34 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

vergent impulses and may find expressions 
which could hardly be understood as utter- 
ances of one central will. We are not aware 
of the last consequences of our own ideas. A 
mind is a big democracy in which a mass 
meeting in any county may vote resolutions 
which would be hissed down in some other 
region. A land has not one mind, and a 
mind has not either. In any complex social 
situation we may speak and act with an inner 
feeling of perfect sincerity, and yet possess 
in the marginal regions of our mind many 
ideas which would demand the opposite kind 
of talk and action and which might in another 
hour push themselves into the center and take 
control of our behavior. La Eochefoucauld 
says that in every misfortune of our friends 
is something which we enjoy, and a hundred 
epigrams tell the same story of the mind's 
duplicity. Can we believe that an ambassa- 
dor at a foreign court in the time of highest 
tension had no other dynamic ideas in his 
mind but those which he utters in a conver- 
sation with a particular man ? And yet have 
we a right to say that he was speaking false- 
hood when he expressed himself? Many 

35 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

contrasting ideas may even be in perfect 
equilibrium, each entirely sincere and each 
filling the whole mind when the situation is 
favoring it. 

There were certainly in the diplomatic his- 
tory of the war periods when the leading 
statesmen in no one of the countries exactly 
knew what they really wanted. No doubt 
the Czar desired peace and believed that he 
desired it ; and yet certainly he wanted war 
and acted under the impulse of this marginal 
idea. This complexity of inner attitudes be- 
came momentous long before the decisive 
steps were taken. Sir Edward Grey and his 
ministers were evidently quite sincere and 
loyal in their dealing with the German chan- 
cellor when they cordially entered into his 
plans for an increasing mutual approach of 
England and Germany. He was just as sin- 
cere and frank and hopeful in his dealings 
with Paris, when he prepared the policies 
which were planned to crush Germany. He 
said to each a little more than he could have 
said in the presence of the other, but there 
was not necessarily any hypocrisy involved. 
Such melodrama psychology which knows 

36 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

only angels and liars, is too clumsy. Hence, 
even if we analyze the multi-colored books of 
documents, we cannot find the real facts and 
cannot discover what this or that statesman 
really wanted. He probably wanted many 
opposite things ; that is, opposite ideas were 
scattered in his mind and each had in itself 
the tendency to become effective. The actor 
himself would not have known in which direc- 
tion his ideas were really driving, and if later 
he decides from his memory impressions what 
really was in his mind, he relies on a recon- 
struction which must be under the influence 
of the further experiences. The struggle 
about the true facts concerning the origin of 
the war usually starts from psychologically 
wrong premises. Whoever reduces the will 
of the personality to a simple yes or no has 
falsified the facts. 

But the sins of the fact seekers go still 
further. They cannot help underscoring the 
data which fit into their argument and ruling 
out the disturbing facts, if a point of view 
can be found from which they become invis- 
ible. My friend from the other side and I 
discuss the nationality of Alsace. I am so 

37 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

proud of my German Alsace which I love and 
am so delighted with its thoroughly patriotic 
German attitude during this war. How 
could it be otherwise, as every soldier from 
Alsace was born under the German flag? 
Alsace has been German as long as anyone 
who went with his regiment can remember. 
But my friend claims Alsace is French be- 
cause it was under the French regime fifty 
years ago and a hundred years ago and two 
hundred years ago. That is, he claims Al- 
sace was always French. But does he not 
know any history? What do those two cen- 
turies under the French regime mean? Al- 
sace was always German. When Louis XIV 
tore it away from the German people, it had 
been thoroughly German since early medieval 
times. What did the short French rule mean 
compared with a thousand years of German 
national life? His fact is that Alsace was 
always French, and mine that Alsace was 
always German. I ignore the little episode 
of foreign rule which surely has not broken 
the thoroughly German language and tradi- 
tion of the Alsatian farmer, and he ignores 
whatever passed before the French grasped 

38 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

it, because he thinks two hundred years are 
enough to look backward. We both are right. 

And where did this war start? The Ger- 
man might say : "With the Kussian mobiliza- 
tion." The Eussian would answer: "No, 
before, with Austria's sharp ultimatum to 
Servia." But the Austrian would reply: 
"The war began with the assassination of the 
Archduke." The British would insist: "It 
began much earlier with Germany's new fleet 
programme." The Germans date it back to 
King Edward's encircling policy which 
welded all Europe together against Germany. 
The French would say: "On the contrary, 
it began with Bismarck's taking Lorraine." 
And Germany shouts: "Napoleon." And 
Europe says: "Frederick the Great." And 
Germany trumps : "Louis XIV." Yet that is 
all superficial. Charlemagne had a most im- 
portant influence on it. And if you say : "No, 
the real trouble began with the great migra- 
tion in the fifth century," it may be true ; and 
yet I think the beginning was much earlier. 
Facts become facts by our selection. 

We poor newspaper readers, of course, 
face constant influences of this type in the 

39 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

big headlines and the other selective agencies 
of the modern press. Exactly the same tele- 
grams take an entirely different meaning, if 
in one paper everything favorable to the one 
side bursts out with the noise of the heavy 
print, and in another the cheerful news of the 
other side is bolstered. We may read the 
small print in both with the same patience, 
and yet the kind editor has helped us to get 
a strong impression only from that to which 
he gives his blessing. An editor has rightly 
boasted that in this war time he does not care 
who writes the news in his paper, if he may 
write the headlines. And yet wise men in 
the editorial offices have not underestimated 
the value of the mild innuendoes in the midst 
of the text. 

But these effects on the mind of the reader 
are constantly supported by the unintentional 
blending of facts and wishes or facts and 
valuations. When the man on the street read 
day after day that the Allies were on the 
point surrounding sometimes the right, 
sometimes the left wing of Germany's west- 
ern army or that very soon the German cen- 
ter would be pierced or that in surely not 

40 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

more than two weeks the Germans will be 
driven back to the Belgian frontier, or that 
without donbt Cracow will fall at once, or 
that Silesia will be stormed, no untrue facts 
were presented to him, but only pious wishes 
which as such are neither true nor untrue. 
Yet these wishes were sufficient to rearrange 
his ideas about the valor of the hostile armies. 
He feels instinctively how the Germans are 
steadily pushed back and daily losing more, 
and therefore he inhibits in his mind the ap- 
prehension of the other not unimportant fact 
that none of those wishes have been realized. 
If such hopes of the war reporters and of 
the editors mold the facts in looking forward, 
the praise and blame have the same subtle 
effect in looking backward. As long as Ant- 
werp stood, it was the one great place and 
all agreed that strategically and politically 
it would be a supreme achievement if Ger- 
many could ever conquer this fortress sur- 
passed only by Paris herself. When Ger- 
man troops took Antwerp on the afternoon 
of the day on which the New Yorkers read in 
the morning that Antwerp was safe at least 
for a month more, the achievement collapsed 

4 41 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

and from the next day on the taking of Ant- 
werp was child's play, hardly worth mention- 
ing among serious people. Success and fail- 
ure become big or small just as it pleases us 
to turn our opera glass. What are the real 
facts as to Germany's standing after these 
six months 1 You are perfectly right : it is a 
failure all around. Paris is not taken ; War- 
saw is not taken; Calais is not taken; London 
is not taken. It is high time to acknowledge 
that it is a miserable fiasco. But another 
friend told me this morning that the German 
achievement of these six months is more than 
a gigantic success ; it is a miracle. He said : 
The whole world encircled Germany, seven 
nations against two, seven hundred million 
men against one hundred million, the oceans 
of the world open to the enemies and Ger- 
many closed in, everyone in the world con- 
vinced that before the first snow falls the 
monarchs of Eussia and Belgium, of France 
and England, would ride triumphantly 
through Unter den Linden in Berlin; and 
now millions of Germans in Eussia and in 
France, and not an enemy on German soil. 
We all are well acquainted, too, with the 

42 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

instinctive tendency to discriminate little dif- 
ferences when our arguments can hinge on 
them and to neglect big differences whenever 
we wish that both cases be treated alike. "I 
am still hoping some day to hear that your 
psychological school is applying its methods 
of investigation to current stories. You will 
see by the papers that an English committee 
has been formed with some names of legal 
eminence. I am hoping that you will either 
assist or criticize their findings or draw up 
a parallel case in which you would perhaps 
compare the results of the bombardment of 
Scarborough and the bombardment of Ostend. 
The people assure me that Ostend is 'quite 
different' in their eyes." When I think that 
this is a quotation from the letter of a well- 
known Englishman sent to me from England 
at the time of the wildest clamor, I feel again 
how the individual Englishman of the best 
type has kept his soberness much more than 
many Americans of the same class who are 
so much more English than the English. I 
do not think that I have lost a single friend 
in England during these six months ; I wish 
I could say the same of New England. But 

43 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

certainly my friend is right. In the eyes of 
the Allies the case of Scarborough, where the 
Germans were bombarding was "quite differ- 
ent" from the case of Ostend where the Eng- 
lish guns bombarded the coast. And when 
the French aviators dropped bombs upon the 
open towns like my beloved Freiburg and 
killed women and children, it is quite differ- 
ent from the case when German aviators do 
it in England. And let us think of Belgium 
— but no, let us not think of Belgium ; "I am 
grown peaceful as old age to-night." 

But our trust in facts has still deeper 
springs. No one can overcome his personal 
relation to the sources of information. Our 
feeling of confidence is essential for the very 
structure of our facts. The whole history of 
politics, of scholarship, of religion, can be 
explained psychologically only if we under- 
stand the tremendous importance of the per- 
sonal readiness to accept or to reject the so- 
called facts. The faithful believer may lis- 
ten to the priest of the other sect, and yet his 
mind is deaf ; he may see, and yet he is blind. 
If a certain statesman is the high priest of 
your cult, his documents are politically 

44 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

sacred ; every doubt is inhibited in the lower 
brain centers before it can reach the sphere 
of deliberation. If your church stands on 
the other side of the street, your eyes soon 
discover that dates are erased here and 
phrases are changed there, that most impor- 
tant letters are left out and conversations 
written down weeks after ; in short, you find 
a skilful lawyer's brief which leaves your 
heart cold, and you hire your lawyer to tear 
it to pieces. 

I do not deny for a moment that whenever 
I read an official statement from Berlin as to 
a positive fact, I accept it uncritically, and 
when I read one from Petrograd, I begin to 
combine and to speculate what may have 
been the real happening. I defend this atti- 
tude of mine to my own conscience because I 
feel sure that the later events have not con- 
tradicted a statement of the German bulletin 
and have rather seldom confirmed, as far as I 
can see, the Eussian. And yet I am psychol- 
ogist enough not to forget how much this 
activity of my brain cells may be due to the 
facti that I breathed German air through 
happy schoolboy days. I have in my Har- 

45 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

vard seminar every Wednesday night sit- 
ting around me two doctor candidates from 
Canada, one from Greece, one from Norway, 
one from Sweden, one from India and one 
from China, scattered among the Americans. 
I suppose that while we agree beautifully on 
the principles of psychology which we dis- 
cuss, the war bulletins awaken in them quite 
different ideas from those in my mind, and I 
hope sincerely that they have been trained 
into such good psychologists that each 
can back his own auto suggestive belief with 
psychological arguments just as well as I 
back my own. You say the facts are moun- 
tains firm as rock : clouds they are. "Do you 
see yonder cloud that is almost in the shape 
of a camel — methinks it is like a weasel — or 
like a whale — they fool me to the top of my 
bent." 

But the fate of our facts is still more piti- 
ful on account not only of our prejudices and 
beliefs, but on account of the associations 
which have been developed in our individual 
life history. We may read the same news 
with the same inner attitude, and yet may re- 
ceive entirely different mental content, be- 

46 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

cause the memory ideas and conceptions 
which cluster about every bit of information 
may be incomparable. Everything which we 
have read and learned has left its trace ; all 
our historical and geographical and cultural 
knowledge stands behind the dates and names 
and happenings which we hear. Emotional 
reminiscences and vivid traveling experi- 
ences may easily give a wrong emphasis to 
this or that. But surely the far greater 
danger is that our lack of ready associations 
— in less psychological language we might 
say our ignorance — will deprive the news of 
its deeper meaning and significance. What 
is the talk about Russia and the Balkan un- 
less some pretty thorough geographical and 
historical knowledge stands behind it? What 
does it mean to write about Germany's poli- 
tics, if it is possible for a man not low in 
American councils to ask me earnestly 
whether Bavaria is a part of Prussia or not? 
How can anyone discuss the French-German 
problem, if he has never heard that the lost 
provinces have been German for a thousand 
years ? 

Why ought we deny in these unhappy times 

47 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

the one regrettable feature of our American 
life as to which we all have peacefully agreed 
in more fortunate times? "We all have dis- 
cussed and discussed some shortcomings of 
our schools. We surely give to our boys and 
girls a splendid assortment of knowledge, but 
we give it superficially with loose, inefficient 
methods, without that strict discipline of the 
mind which alone trains for solid knowledge 
and intellectual stability. The most serious 
school men of the country have expressed 
such views a thousand times, and I myself 
have preached this sermon for nearly a quar- 
ter of a century. The dangers of which we 
all were afraid have perhaps never come so 
near as in last fall's gigantic test of public 
opinion. The lack of accuracy in our school 
methods counts perhaps most in history and 
geography; and historic and geographic 
knowledge was necessary above all, if the 
great events of the European crisis were to 
be seen in their true perspective. A few 
years ago I told of my experience with a 
Boston telegraph operator to whom I gave a 
cablegram and who inquired whether Berlin 
was in France. I might just as well have 

48 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

spoken of a member of the cabinet who was 
not aware that there is a difference between 
Budapest and Bucharest and was ready to 
wager that St. Petersburg lies on the Arctic 
Sea. It may be that both know better now, 
but six months of war is too costly a method 
to teach the elements of geography. We may 
disagree as to whether America needs more 
soldiers and more sailors to prepare for what- 
ever the future brings, but we cannot dis- 
agree that she needs above all better school 
teachers. 

But the influence of our mental associa- 
tions colors the facts even in the most erudite 
minds. The papers yesterday brought out 
the fervent speech of the one man in the ad- 
miration of whose thorough knowledge and 
wisdom we men of all creeds are unanimous. 
Charles W. Eliot, the brave leader of the anti- 
neutral party, directed the attack against the 
Germans this time from a new side. He 
showed that the Germans lack that freedom 
of spirit which shows itself in a nation's in- 
ventiveness. He said: "Most of the war 
equipment which the Germans are now work- 
ing to full capacity, including the telephone 

49 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

and telegraph, the wireless, electric communi- 
cation of power, the aeroplane, the torpedo 
and the submarine were all originated not in 
the fatherland but chiefly in the Anglo-Saxon 
countries." Here we have expressed con- 
crete facts, and they resound effectively in 
every American mind, where the same asso- 
ciations are held in readiness. Of course, 
the telegraph is Morse and the telephone is 
Bell, and the aeroplane is Wright and the 
wireless is Marconi and the torpedo is White- 
head, and so on. How different the same 
facts look when the circle of associations is 
less influenced by American tradition. I got 
my physics in Germany, and therefore nat- 
urally think of the fact that the first electro- 
magnetic telegraph was invented and used 
by Gauss and Weber in Gottingen in 1833 and 
immediately afterward improved by Steinheil 
in Munich, who introduced the optical point 
signs. Only several years after Gauss and 
Weber did Morse come forward. And just 
as Germans had the first telegraph, they had 
the first telephone, which was invented by 
Phillip Eeis in Frankfurt-am-Main. As to 
the electric communication of power, I do 

50 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

think that Werner-Siemens was the first who 
in the seventies built electrically controlled 
vehicles. As to the aeroplane, I do not want 
to disparage the fine work of my friend 
Langley, but surely Lilienthal in Berlin was 
the first who invented the motor flying- 
machine which flew more than a thousand 
feet. The principles of the wireless trans- 
mission of ether waves were discovered by 
Heinrich Hertz in Bonn. Only the tor- 
pedoes and submarines were indeed not in- 
vented by Germans: evidently the imagina- 
tion of the Germans does not run in the 
direction of such margining machines. But 
in every sphere of life saving and life fur- 
thering German inventiveness from the days 
of the first printing press to the present day 
appears as a most pronounced feature; and 
yet the leader of American thought denies its 
existence altogether. We say facts, and we 
mean will-o'-the-wisps. 

But the queerest thing is that not only you 
and I see the same fact differently, but that 
surely you and maybe even I saw it yesterday 
so and see it today otherwise and will see it 
tomorrow again quite differently. German 

51 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

authors have published in recent weeks views 
on Paris which seem to harmonize poorly 
with their appreciation in the past. And so it 
goes around among the belligerents. It is not 
worth while to contrast the views of this sea- 
son and of last when penny-a-liners signed 
the proclamations on the merits of foreign 
lands. They simply write as the fashion 
commands. But it is of instructive value to 
see how even the strongest and the most inde- 
pendent thinkers change and change and 
always still believe firmly that they speak of 
facts. The lions of English literature have 
tried to outroar one another when the scent 
of German culture was in the air. England 
is all, and Germany less than nothing; Eng- 
land is noble and Germany infamous. But 
of all of them the most superb was H. G. 
Wells. England is wonderful, and Germany 
wretched — in August, 1914. But in May, 
1914, the same H. G. Wells published a book 
"An Englishman Looks at the World," and 
I read there the following remarks in which 
the famous author shows at his best. He 
says: 

We are intensely jealous of Germany, not only 
52 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

because the Germans outnumber us and have a 
much larger and more diversified country than 
ours and lie in the very heart and body of Europe, 
but because in the last hundred years while we have 
fed on platitudes and vanity, they have had the 
energy and humility to develop a splendid system 
of national education, to toil at science and art and 
literature, to develop social organization, to master 
and better our methods of business and industry 
and to clamber above us in the scale of civilization. 



It is an old adage, "In time of peace pre- 
pare for war." Too many authors have for- 
gotten it. They ought to have written their 
essays and speeches in peaceful days with 
greater care so that they might not bear wit- 
ness against that truth which they don in war 
time. 

Even far from the battlefields this psycho- 
logical reorganization has gone on from the 
lowest level to the highest. Again I may 
point to the top of the pyramid. Hundreds 
of thousands have become convinced that 
there is no liberty in Germany and no mor- 
ality and no sense of truth, not because they 
had reason to believe so, but because Charles 
W. Eliot has said so with emphasis and he 

53 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

surely can see the true facts more clearly 
than the crowd. Yet only a year ago in one 
of the most forcible speeches which I ever 
heard from this great man, he said in New 
York, speaking of American students who 
had gone to Germany : 

They saw how two great doctrines which had 
sprung from the German Protestant reformation 
had been developed by Germans from seed then 
planted in Germany. The first was the doctrine of 
universal education developed from the Protestant 
conception of individual responsibility, and the 
second was the great doctrine of civil liberty, lib- 
erty in industry, in society, in government, liberty 
with order under law. These two principles took 
their rise in Protestant Germany, and America has 
been the greatest beneficiary of that noble teaching. 

Ex-President Eliot continues: 

Scientific research has been learned through 
practice in Germany by thousands of American 
students and teachers. It is impossible to describe 
or even imagine what an immense intellectual gift 
this has been from Germany to America. It is, of 
course, true that America is indebted not only to 
Germany but also to England, Scandinavia, France, 
Italy and of late to Russia for this perfected spirit 

54 



THE SO-CALLED FACTS 

and method of research. But America is more in- 
debted to Germany than to any other nation, be- 
cause the range of German research has been wider 
and deeper than in any other of the nations men- 
tioned. There is another point of union between 
Germany and America which may come some day 
to the stage of practical efficacy. To be sure, it is 
nothing but a sentiment or feeling. But senti- 
ments often supply the motive power for vigorous 
action. The Teutonic peoples set a higher value 
on truth in speech, thought and action than any 
other peoples. Germany and America, England, 
Scandinavia and Holland are one in this respect. 
They all love truth ; they seek it ; they woo it. 
They respect the man who speaks and acts the 
truth, even to his own injury. I say that here is 
a fine point of union and real likeness of spirit and 
community in devotion and worship among all the 
Teutonic peoples. Let us hope that at no distant 
day this common worship, this common devotion, 
will result in common beneficient action. 

What is the truth? Is it a fact that Ger- 
many is leading in civil liberty, liberty in 
industry, in society, in government, liberty 
with order under law, as President Eliot told 
us in peace, or is it a fact that England and 
France and Russia fight Germany in the in- 
terests of liberty because Germany has none, 
55 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

as lie tells us in war? Is it a fact that Ger- 
many clambered above England in the scale 
of civilization as H. G. Wells told us when 
he was sober, or is it a fact that German 
civilization stands far below the English as 
H. G. Wells tells ns since he is drunk with 
the red wine of war? Are facts only fables 
and fancies? Does every untruth really be- 
come a fact if it is repeated often enough? 
Does only the one fact stand : that there are 
no facts? "But do not let us quarrel any 
more. ... I am grown peaceful as old age 
to-night." 



Ill 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 



I always think with great delight of the 
winter evening when we founded the Cosmo- 
politan Student Club at the University of 
Berlin. Many hundred students were pres- 
ent. I was at that time Harvard exchange 
professor in Germany, and it was my share 
to introduce that first meeting by an address 
on the true international spirit. I tried to 
show that even a strong, healthy nationalism 
does not interfere with it, when it is coupled 
with an earnest desire to understand the atti- 
tudes of the other nations. The true motto 
of the cosmopolitan clubs all over the world 
remains: "Above all nations is humanity." 
As an illustration of this inner unity of spirit 
academic representatives of more than twenty 
nations followed my speech with enthusiastic 

5 57 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

words, and everyone expressed cordially the 
particular reasons why his nationality was in 
sympathy with the German spirit and why we 
all were one. The greatest applause, as I re- 
member, followed the most eloquent words of 
the Russian, the French, the English and the 
American speakers. We all felt how easy it is 
to understand a foreign nation. 

Four years have passed since that happy 
meeting and how we all have suddenly 
learned the difference between theory and 
practice. Yes : it is easy to understand a for- 
eign nation as long as we move in routine 
paths and no conflict lies between us. But 
how tremendously difficult it is after all to 
understand the people beyond the frontier 
as soon as the peace is disturbed. On the 
surface it looks so simple. Facts are facts, 
and we all must be able to find out the true 
facts, and as soon as we have the facts, noth- 
ing is needed but to measure them by the 
standards of humanity. Above all nations is 
humanity. The deeds are in harmony or in 
disharmony with those highest values of man- 
kind. They are moral or they are immoral. 
If we are sincere in seeking the facts and 

58 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

honest in applying the standards of human- 
ity, we all must agree, and if we are brave, we 
shall not be afraid of any verdict which may 
hurt our sympathies. But facts are not facts : 
facts are fancies ; facts are fables. And only 
one thing is still more difficult than to agree 
on facts: to agree on the highest standards. 
Above all nations is humanity. But this idea 
of humanity above nations is a different one 
for every nation. Even if all mankind agreed 
on the facts, and if everyone judged them 
most sincerely and honestly by his ideal 
standards, there might still be the confusion 
of Babel. 

Facts in themselves are of course neither 
good nor bad. It is too often overlooked 
that the scientist who simply describes and 
explains facts as they are cannot possibly 
reach in his world any standards and values. 
It is true we hear the naturalist talking about 
development and evolution, but he oversteps 
his limits if he means by such terms that a 
change from the worse to the better has gone 
on. He has the right to speak only about a 
change from the simple to the complex, from 
the uniform to the highly organized. As 

59 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

soon as lie calls the primitive state less good 
and the differentiated state better, he mixes 
values with the mere facts, for which the 
reasons lie entirely outside of the facts which 
he describes and explains. For the consist- 
ent scientist the cosmos is not better than the 
chaos. Any group of facts may admit any 
number of valuations. These depend entirely 
upon the personal attitudes. As soon as we 
see some goal before us, the decision is easy. 
Everything which moves in the direction of 
the goal is desirable, is good, is valuable. 
Everything which leads away from the goal 
or hinders the progress toward it is bad. If 
all civilized nations could choose the same 
goal, if they all would see the highest values 
of life in the same ends, they would surely 
not quarrel about the right and wrong of his- 
toric events. They might dispute details, but 
the great tendencies would be controlled by 
the common standards and the common ideal 
values. 

The clamor about the war would have been 
less puzzling and confusing and torturing if 
we had not in the excitement of the day so 
completely forgotten that this diversity of 

60 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

highest ideals exists and necessarily exists. 
The mere right of the armies and all conflict 
of weapons do not in the least indicate that 
contrasts of ultimate standards exist. Na- 
tions may enter into selfish fights with one 
another and yet all be dominated by the same 
ideals. Then they may fight about influence 
and power. But in our day we have seen a 
very different spectacle ; not only armies are 
fighting: ideals are clashing. Actions which 
in the eyes of one party appear of highest 
ideal value are looked on as criminal and in- 
famous in another group. Not only the crowd 
is glorifying and vituperating the same deeds. 
It is no blind swaying by sympathies and 
hatred. No: the loftiest and most thought- 
ful leaders disagree fundamentally as to the 
inner value of the events quite without re- 
gard to the question to whom they are useful. 
They really measure with different stand- 
ards, and the fatal calamity is that they are 
not aware of it. Everyone simply takes it for 
granted that his highest ideals are free from 
national limitations, that they are inborn with 
man, that they are God-given and beyond 
dispute. They do not see that all the wran- 

61 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

gling about the verdicts is idle as long as it 
is not recognized that different standards can 
exist and as long as one is not agreed npon. 
It is not a mere difference of terms ; it is not 
like the thermometers of Fahrenheit and of 
Celsius which measure the same temperatures 
by different scales. The moral boiling point 
and the moral freezing point themselves are 
different in the different universes of values. 
The ultimate ideals of Tolstoi's Russia are 
not those of modern Japan. Just that which 
is silently taken for granted by the one would 
be disputable to the other. The war which 
has raged about us here in America has been 
essentially stirred up by the contrast of Eng- 
lish and German highest values. These con- 
flicting ideals have been still more responsible 
for the lack of understanding between the 
Anglo-Americans and the German- Americans 
than the national sympathies. To be sure, it 
is a fashion of the day to deride composite 
citizenships. A fervent Americanism seems 
to forget such hyphenated structures. But is 
that really in the interest of American cul- 
ture I Certainly there are many problems be- 
fore the land in which any provincialism 

62 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

would be ill-judged. Yet there are not a few 
solid tasks for which it is most desirable that 
the West feel itself as "West and the South 
as South and the East as East, and others 
where America could not succeed if Pennsyl- 
vania should forget that it is not Nebraska, 
and if Ohio could not be discriminated from 
New England. Differentiation is as impor- 
tant as unity. 

But no kind of difference is more fertile 
and more promising for the inner progress of 
American culture than that of the racial ele- 
ments. It is one-sided to see in them only dif- 
ferent groups of inherited traits. The more 
vital issues are those of traditions, memories 
and feelings cultivated by home influence, 
transmitted from generation to generation. 
Any culture must wither when its roots are 
cut off. Peoples whose memories are artifi- 
cially suppressed and discredited become 
sadly weakened for their national tasks. The 
whole strength of the American people lies 
in the diversity of its memories and tradi- 
tions. All the national aims of Europe have 
lived on in America's racial groups, and to 
combine them into new ideals appears a 

63 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

higher goal and mission for America than a 
mere continuation of English endeavors. It 
would be a great pity if in the midst of Amer- 
ican culture the feeling of this diversity were 
lost and if Anglo-Americans and Irish- Amer- 
icans, German- Americans and Swedish- Amer- 
icans, Polish-Americans and Jewish-Ameri- 
cans should lose their vivid sense of special 
memories, special duties, special ideals. 

The historic growth of the United States 
gave to the Anglo-American influences much 
stronger control of American culture than 
the size of this racial element would suggest. 
The Anglo-American culture forced itself 
superficially, as the oldest in the land, on the 
millions who came later and who adjusted 
themselves to the feelings of the first-comers 
as long as no great issues were involved. 
But it was to be expected that in any great 
crisis of thought and feeling the differences 
of tradition and ideal among the various 
hyphenated groups would come more strongly 
into the foreground. This was unavoidable, 
but one thing might have been avoided: the 
conflict of these racial sentiments ought not 
to have degenerated into abusive hatred. It 

64 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

ought to have been recognized that the un- 
derlying principle is really a difference of 
ideals and that it is therefore a conflict 
in which each side ought to have the 
fullest respect for the other. It is fun- 
damentally meaningless to blame and to 
accuse anyone for differently molded ideals, 
if they are truly ideals for him and if he 
serves them faithfully and loyally with all his 
heart. But as the traditional Anglo-Ameri- 
can ideals prevail so strongly in public opin- 
ion, we may become more easily conscious of 
the contrasts, if we consider the Anglo-Amer- 
ican view as the typical American one of to- 
day, and look on it in opposition to the ideals 
of Germany, of which the German- American 
traditions are, of course, a reflection. 

What do Americans and what do Germans 
consider the highest aim which makes life and 
strife worth while? Whatever answer may 
be suggested, it could never mean that every 
man and woman on the street knows to what 
harbor the boat is sailing. Mostly they think 
of themselves and of their happiness, of their 
friendships and of their foeships, and would 
hardly care to discover that after all some 

65 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

kind of life philosophy and social religion car- 
ries them forward, even in their trivial rou- 
tine work. Moreover, the millionfold vari- 
eties of personal temperament and character, 
intelligence and talent, shade the peoples so 
richly that the underlying pattern of beliefs 
is often hard to recognize. But if such an 
abstract formula were to be proposed, what 
good American would not feel instinctively 
that the great fly-wheel of his inner life is 
the vague wish to bring the greatest possible 
happiness to the greatest possible number of 
individuals. Not everybody can care for 
everyone, but the idea that we contribute a 
little to somebody's comfort and pleasure 
and enjoyment is the one aim which lifts 
our life beyond mere platitude and selfish- 
ness. 

We may give our seat in the electric car 
to an old woman or draw our check for the 
flood victims, and we feel that we have done 
what humanity demands. Unselfish life is 
not only a branch of the associated charities ; 
it is scattered in thousandfold efforts for re- 
form and justice, for knowledge and beauty, 
for politics and religion, and yet what are 

66 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

they but dissociated charities. We contribute 
our share to knowledge because sooner or 
later our little footnote to the book of sci- 
ence will help to some improvement in prac- 
tical life. Who would burn the midnight 
Tungsten if his work would never be useful to 
anyone? We write poems and plays and 
paint our paintings to bring comfort and 
pleasure into the dreary heart. We fight for 
justice in order that every individual may 
feel his life and property protected. We 
strive even for farsighted reforms in order 
that our great-grandchildren may enjoy and 
profit from the forests which we save and the 
lands which we open. Yes : we build churches 
because we wish to bring the rest and peace 
of religion into every human soul and give 
to it at least a promise of individual happi- 
ness when the pilgrimage is over. 

The state, above all, is to us the wonderful 
organization by which as much happiness as 
possible is guaranteed to everyone who takes 
his share of citizenship. Politicians may dif- 
fer in their schemes of scientific management 
for the great state plant, but that its wheels 
are running for the manufacture of comfort 

67 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

and happiness for the individual men and 
women and children is their common creed. 
Why do we educate but to give to the boys 
and girls the preparation which secures to 
them the greatest chance for a happy life? 
Truly it is a noble ideal which brings order 
into the chaos of human desires and appraises 
the value of every action in the world. What- 
ever helps to bring happiness to individuals 
is good, and whatever interferes with such 
happiness of men is wrong and to be despised. 
But if our heart is truly filled with the belief 
in this highest value, who dares to suggest 
that humanity stops with the borders of our 
country? We suffer with the sufferers in 
every corner of the globe, and there is no one 
on earth to whom we ought not to bring edu- 
cation and knowledge, art and religion, so 
that a ray of happiness may fall into the dark- 
est soul. Our ideal would be prostituted if 
our selfishness demanded any jingoistic boun- 
daries for the sphere of our humanitarian im- 
pulses. Our desire to bring happiness to the 
individuals expands to cover the world. Have 
we not a right to expect that in response the 
whole world will share our efforts f Is it not 

68 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

our moral duty to demand that our ideal be- 
come the ideal of the whole world? 

But here we may be illogical. Perhaps a 
mistake has slipped in. Have we a right to 
take it for granted that our ideal is the only 
one which may give meaning and purpose to 
man's life and strife? I do not care how 
many between the Baltic Sea and the Alps, 
between the Ehine and the Vistula, are clearly 
aware of what the deepest aim of their will 
to live really is and ought to be. But I do 
know with all the fibers of my soul that no- 
body has understood the deepest meaning of 
German life who has not been lifted by the 
wave of an entirely different emotion. To be 
a German means to be filled with the belief 
that the highest aim does not lie in the indi- 
viduals and their states of happiness, but in 
the service to ideal values. The German 
creed would say: the value of reform and jus- 
tice, of science and art, of state and church, 
never lies in the mere comfort and pleasure 
which they bring to individual men. They are 
valuable, eternally valuable, in themselves. 
Their growth and unfolding in human souls 
is an end in itself and never merely a means 

69 



THE PEACE AND AMEKICA 

for happiness or any other individual feel- 
ings. 

Hence life has its meaning in the service 
to ideals. The scholar seeks to discover the 
truth in order that truth be unfolded. 
"Whether his new insight can be used for a 
new breakfast food has nothing to do with 
the true value of the knowledge. To sing 
your song and to create beauty is gloriously 
valuable. Whether its charm is sipped by 
this or that individual has nothing to do with 
its significance. Keligion is not sacred be- 
cause it can be an opiate for individual pain. 
That the thought of the kingdom of heaven 
may irradiate through all human work is an 
ideal perfect in itself. The meaning of edu- 
cation is not to furnish the boys and girls 
with warm overcoats against the cold wind 
and the stormy weather of life. Education is 
to mold the personality and to make it able 
and willing to serve the realization of ideals. 
From this point of view social reform and jus- 
tice and progress are never mere methods to 
dry tears and to awaken smiles and to fill 
stomachs and to tickle the minds with agree- 
able feelings of pleasure. You ought to be 

70 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

loyal to them, even if you have to go hungry 
and have to suffer, and you are to die in order 
that they may grow ; and the mere pleasure of 
your neighbor would not be more valuable 
than your own. There is no need that there 
be pleasure in the world, but there is need 
that there be justice and righteousness. The 
state, too, is then not an organization for the 
furtherance of pleasant feelings by million- 
fold cooperation. Its true task is the fulfil- 
ment of an ideal mission. 

This German ideal may appear to you wise 
or unwise, good or bad, lofty or fantastic, in- 
spiring or discouraging, but in any case you 
cannot deny that it is also an ideal. It shows 
an aim and a goal which puts an entirely dif- 
ferent valuation on every bit of life experi- 
ence. The Anglo-American says: there can- 
not be any other ultimate standard than the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number. 
And now the German comes and says that he 
does not see in the mere happiness of any 
number of persons anything ultimately valua- 
ble and that the true measurement demands an 
entirely different standard. And if the Ger- 
man insists that this ultimate value lies in 

71 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

the realization of the cultural ideals them- 
selves and that every human action must be 
measured by the degree of loyalty and faith- 
fulness in the service of these ideals, the 
Anglo-American is likely to shrug his shoul- 
ders. He does not see what that Teuton is 
talking about. Where are those ideals real- 
ized but in the minds of individuals, and what 
is the use of the realization if they do not 
bring pleasure and happiness to individual 
men. That may become a long debate. It 
may be carried on on the high level of philos- 
ophy with the arguments of Kantian idealism 
on the one side and English utilitarianism on 
the other, or it may plod along with home- 
made middle-class arguments and may help- 
lessly wander around in a circle. But it is 
clear that the two parties cannot understand 
each other until they distinctly recognize what 
really separates them. 

If they quarrel about a political act or a 
social deed or a cultural function, and the one 
praises what the other denounces, they can- 
not even grasp one another's intentions, un- 
less each first understands with what stand- 
ards and scales the other is measuring his 

72 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

world. Much mutual misjudging and end- 
lessly much bitterness might have been 
spared the world if those who judged had not 
so hastily believed that the highest ideals of 
humanity must be the same for all civilized 
nations. So much noble scorn could have 
been turned into sweeter emotions if Ameri- 
can editorial writers had always been aware 
that their critical interpretation of Germany 
and German policies was entirely dependent 
upon certain silent claims which they took for 
granted. They considered it self-evident that 
mankind's enjoyment of happiness is the high- 
est goal. Their whole editorial structure 
would have fallen asunder if they had fully 
understood that a man can be a man and yet 
be convinced that the pursuit of happiness and 
the propagation of happiness are never ulti- 
mate ends and that the real goal lies outside 
of the markets for human happiness. 

This contrast of the American and the Ger- 
man fundamental belief as to the true values 
in life has molded the nations through the 
centuries. Everything which is great and 
strong on either side is based on the founda- 
tions of these deepest beliefs. Everything 

6 73 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

which is weak must be understood from these 
conditions. But indeed the whole life must 
take different shape. American life finds its 
nobleness and its weakness in the instinctive 
effort to make the individual paramount. 
The self-determination of the individual gives 
meaning to American political life; his self- 
assertion creates its economic and its social 
development. As the individual aim is happi- 
ness, the American must strive for objective 
results which insure the greatest possible 
pleasure to the greatest number. The whole 
nation is bent on success, of which money 
value is only the socially simplest scale. From 
the Atlantic to the Pacific the country asks 
perpetually : what is the score 1 Goethe says : 
"True traveling is only if you do not travel 
in order to arrive" : America always wants to 
arrive. 

The true German — I do not ask now 
whether or not many are Americanized, just 
as many an Anglo-American is Germanized — 
has no instinct which would drive him in this 
direction. He feels as if the humanity of 
well-fed hustlers would be a cheap ideal. The 
mere comfort of feeling of the other fellow is 

74 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

something which awakes the semi-selfish feel- 
ing of sympathy but does not arouse any in- 
spiration. The individual has rights only in so 
far as they flow from his duties. Political 
and economic and cultural progress are the 
true realities: the individuals count only 
through the help which they bring to these 
ideal powers. This feeling alone gives to 
German scholarship that thoroughness which 
has made it masterful: the individual does 
not devote himself to it in order to help other 
men by his discoveries, but in order that he 
may carry a stone to the upbuilding of the 
temple of scholarship. This is the spirit 
which permeates the German school where 
every pupil is brought up in the feeling that 
education is service for the national culture. 
This is the meaning of social demands. 
The American likes to praise the golden rule, 
and his individual ideals must lead him to the 
approval of such mutual help insurance. But 
the golden rule can triumph and yet morality 
may break down and log-rolling and corrup- 
tion may grow rankly. The ideal of German 
life is to follow that voice of conscience which 
Kant called the "categorical imperative." It 

75 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

does not demand that you do unto others as 
you would that they do unto you. It does de- 
mand that you act to others so that the prin- 
ciple of your action could be made a law for 
all. The American likes to call his land God's 
country, and he thinks of the blessed wealth 
and abundance which gives to every individ- 
ual his ample chance. The German too feels 
that his land is God's country, and he has 
never felt it more than during this war. But 
he means by it that the nation's whole task is 
ultimately religious, that its work is devoted 
to aims which lie beyond any individual de- 
sires and are only objects of faith and belief. 
The contrast of attitude must lead also to 
an entirely different view of freedom. The 
Anglo-Saxon view is : freedom means the po- 
litical right of the individual to follow his own 
personal wishes within the limits which the 
law determines and these limits of the law are 
set by the personal wishes of all the individ- 
uals. If the wishes of one man never inter- 
fered with the wishes of his neighbor, no laws 
would be needed. Everyone could then do 
just as he pleased and would have the great- 
est amount of liberty. In the German view 

76 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

the word freedom is meaningless except as 
the counterpart of duty. The right simply 
to follow selfish desires is in itself no value. 
Freedom is the right to serve the overper- 
sonal aims in a strictly personal individual 
form. It is well known that Germany has the 
freest manhood suffrage in Europe, in strik- 
ing contrast to England with its vote based 
on the tax rate. But while the Anglo-Saxon 
politics finds its very life condition in the 
two-party system, the deepest nature of the 
German public life lies in the abundant variety 
of parties. The two-party system is a method 
of external success, but as it leads the voter 
again and again to the decision between two 
platforms or two candidates, when he does 
not agree with the principles of either, the 
German's spirit revolts against this denial of 
individual conviction. 

The whole Anglo-Saxon life is controlled 
by this desire for convention, for uniformity, 
which extinguishes the personal trait. To be 
conspicuous appears unsocial, and the ideal is 
to be like one's neighbor. The more the in- 
dividual submerges his individuality, the 
more he can hope to profit individually from 

77 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

his belonging to the conventionalized society. 
His personal interests are safeguarded by his 
being a member of the great party or of the 
social monotony. The true German spirit 
does not know this harness for the individual. 
The individual will be recognized the more, 
the more he serves the overpersonal aims with 
all the specific traits of his personality. The 
state itself is a community of these free 
agents bound together not by the common in- 
terest in safeguarding the right to fulfil per- 
sonal wishes but by the individual service to 
common overpersonal ideas. Such a state 
does not foster ideas in order to gain power, 
but needs power in order to further its idea. 
Such a state must value symbols and must 
cling to a form of government in which the 
leader is independent from the mere individ- 
ual wills of its members but raised by the 
symbolic traditions of the nation. No greater 
test of this anti-utilitarian idea of the German 
state was possible than the present war. The 
English army has had to step down to the 
most radical means of propaganda to find 
men who are willing to enter the battle. Wag- 
ons with exciting inscriptions had to pass 

78 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

through the streets of London to stir the read- 
iness to serve ; and yet even modest hopes were 
not fulfilled. But in Germany no one was sur- 
prised that beside the regular army of mil- 
lions, more than two million men who had no 
obligation to wear the uniform stormed the 
recruiting quarters with the one wish to give 
their lives for their country. And more he- 
roic than any of them the mothers and wives 
stood behind them. They had found their 
happiness in their sons and husbands, but they 
felt that happiness is not the aim of life. 
They wanted to serve ideal ends and without 
wincing they offered all they had. 

No one will claim that such different philos- 
ophies of life and of history are present as 
theories in the mind of the average German 
or the average Anglo-Saxon. They give 
meaning to their actions, but this meaning 
lies outside their consciousness. If a boy 
throws a ball, he is not aware that he relies 
on the physical law of gravitation and on the 
general demand for the constancy of physical 
laws ; and yet without such a supposition his 
throwing would be meaningless. We know 
more than we know. But, furthermore, no 

79 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

one can overlook how in practical life the de- 
mands of the individualism and of the over- 
individualism, the demands of utilitarianism 
and of idealism, may approach one another so 
nearly that the special teaching may appear 
almost the same. The Anglo-Saxon Puritan 
and the German idealist may agree entirely 
in their postulates for sacrifice; and yet the 
one is as much individualistic as the other is 
anti-individualistic. Finally, you surely may 
serve utilitarian purposes with high idealism 
of character, and on the other side you may 
run with the idealists from quite trivial mo- 
tives. But all this cannot overcome or allow 
us to ignore the fundamental difference be- 
tween the two national ideals each of which 
has in itself the tendency to set a general 
human standard. 

But even if we were to contrast the diver- 
ging humanistic ideals in their most radical 
and sharpest forms as if one absolutely 
contradicted what the other demanded as an 
ideal for mankind, would nothing remain as 
common ground for humanity? Is there not 
after all one humanity which stands above 
the many humanities'? I think the case of the 

80 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

moral law offers an analogy. There is hardly- 
one moral prescription which is the same all 
over the world. The sociologists and the eth- 
nologists tell us no end of stories about the 
manifoldness of moral rules. In some Pacific 
islands they consider it a moral law to kill the 
parents when they grow old; in less pacific 
islands that is considered immoral. Yet there 
is one demand, the highest, that is common 
for all human beings, the moral law to fulfil 
one's duty. This highest of all laws leaves 
it to everyone's conscience what his duty may 
be. But that the duty ought to stand above 
every whim and desire is the eternal demand 
without which morality itself would be denied. 
This one absolute postulate gives meaning 
and dignity to all the special and fleeting 
moral ideas which the world generates. The 
demand of your conscience may be to do what 
my conscience forbids me to do. But as long 
as I recognize that you are doing your duty 
as you see it and that you are ready to raise 
your duty above all your selfish' desires, I re- 
spect your action just as I demand respect 
for mine. We stand on the same ground as 
long as we are one in the conviction that we 

81 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

must follow the call of duty as we hear it. 
Your duty and mine may make us fight against 
each other. But we should become disloyal 
to the highest moral demand if we were to 
despise each other as long as each is ful- 
filling the duty of his heart in loyalty and 
moral obedience. 

It is not different with the national ideals 
of humanity. They may differ and clash, but 
above them stands the eternal demand that 
every nation remain loyal to its ideals and 
fulfil its task in obedience to its historical 
mission. A nation has not arbitrarily se- 
lected its ideals. Its whole historical devel- 
opment and tradition live on for all times in 
its national ideas of ultimate values. Each 
nation which firmly believes in its humanistic 
goal must adhere to the faith that its ideals 
are higher than those of any other. It is like 
the faith in one's own religion. Therefore no 
nation has the moral right to throw away its 
ideals and to exchange them for selfish rea- 
sons. A nation decays and dies when it be- 
trays its historical mission in the world. No 
nation has a right to commit suicide. As long 
as nations bend all their energies to the fulfil- 

82 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

ment of their mission, which surely begins 
with their self-preservation, the demand of 
highest humanity is fulfilled, from whatever 
national standpoint we may look on it. We 
may be foes or friends ; we must salute with 
respect the nation which sees its mission and 
lives up to it. 

How different would the last six months 
have been if the American leaders of public 
opinion had respected this fundamental truth. 
Instead of taking the Anglo-Saxon individ- 
ualistic and utilitarian ideals as the only 
standard by which the right and wrong of the 
world is to be measured, they would have seen 
that Germany is not disloyal to ideals, when 
her ideals deny the individualistic and the 
utilitarian creed. They would have asked 
only the gravest of all questions : whether Ger- 
many has lived up to the mission which she 
received from the God of history. They 
would have entered into that belief in ulti- 
mate values an echo of which could be heard 
in the German-American arguments. Then 
no bitterness and no hatred would have come 
over the land. With respect, with admira- 
tion, with awe, Americans of whatever sym- 

83 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

pathies would have looked with steadfast eye 
to the tremendous world struggle between 
England and Germany. Then the true Amer- 
ican would have felt contempt only for the 
German nation if it had thrown away its 
traditions and its faith and had ignobly 
yielded to the demands of comfort. But it 
did stand with a bravery unique in the world's 
history against the three greatest military 
powers of the age to fight for an undisturbed 
peace which would allow it to fulfil its ideal 
mission. Every word of contempt in the face 
of such a gigantic struggle of worthy rivals 
disgraces the speaker. 

England herself knew much better. Pro- 
fessor Cramb of London in his splendid book 
"Germany and England" has expressed with 
fervent words what even in the excitement 
of the day no true Englishman has entirely 
forgotten. 

And here let me say with regard to Germany 
that of all England's enemies she is by far the 
greatest ; and by greatness I mean not merely mag- 
nitude, not her millions of soldiers, her millions of 
inhabitants: I mean grandeur of soul. She is the 
greatest and most heroic enemy that England in 

84 



THE HIGHEST VALUES 

the thousand years of her history has ever con- 
fronted. In the sixteenth century we made war 
upon Spain and the empire of Spain. But Ger- 
many in the twentieth century is a greater power, 
greater in conception, in thought, in all that makes 
for human dignity, than was the Spain of Charles 
V and Philip II. In the seventeenth century we 
fought against Holland, but the Germany of Bis- 
marck and the Kaiser is greater than the Holland 
of De Witt. In the eighteenth century we fought 
against France, and again the Germany of today 
is a higher, more august power than France under 
Louis XIV. 

Would that this spirit of the noblest Eng- 
land had permeated the public opinion of 
America : then we should have experienced a 
neutrality of spirit which would have en- 
nobled the whole people and would have 
emanated a lofty fairness over the globe. 

But with the clear understanding of the 
two ideals arises also the highest hope that 
they may blend into a new life aim which har- 
monizes the opposites. In the great Amer- 
ican crucible they could melt together as no- 
where else in the world. Nobody can discern 
today how much in the last three-quarters of 
a century of American life those of English 

85 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

and how much those of German race have con- 
tributed to the progress of the land and who 
has done more. Their work has become a 
unit, and it would be a happy development for 
the national soul, indeed, if at last their ideals 
would form a unit too. The outer framework 
of the national life has been completed, but 
the spirit of the country would only gain if 
the traditional Anglo-Saxon culture also ab- 
sorbed more and more the German faith in 
discipline of the will and in the overpersonal 
value of the ideal goods. In a thousand walks 
of life the soul of America demands it, and 
many popular movements of the day in the 
political and the social sphere are only in- 
stinctive efforts to bring Germanic idealism 
into the Anglo-Saxon life philosophy. The 
more the two ideals absorb each other, the 
more America as a nation can become sym- 
pathetic with both sides of the conflict which 
perturbs the world, and the more it will reach 
in the future the high place of the arbiter who 
brings peace. 



IV 



WILLIAM II 



Emperor's Birthday! Since my early 
childhood Emperor's Birthday has always 
been to me a joyful holiday. How the beau- 
tiful old streets of my native town were re- 
joicing in their flags and garlands ! "We little 
boys with the old emperor's favorite blue 
cornflower in our buttonholes were so proud 
when we assembled in the school hall and 
the principal made his enthusiastic speech 
about the German Empire of medieval times 
and about Prussia's glorious rise, and about 
the foundation of the new German Empire, 
and we declaimed patriotic poems. Then we 
boys stormed to the marketplace where the 
military bands gave a concert, and in the 
evening the candles were burning in every 
window, and we paraded through the illumi- 

87 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

nated streets. Soon came the thrilling fes- 
tivities of the student time when onr great 
professors stirred the youthful soul with 
their speeches at the university Kommers. 
When our enthusiasm reached its height with 
the ceremony of the "Salamander" for the old 
emperor, it was like a solemn pledge in jubi- 
lant pride. 

A few years later, it was no longer the old 
emperor: his grandson had come to the 
throne. The student had become an instruc- 
tor, the instructor a young professor, but 
year after year Emperor's Birthday was a 
gala day with banquets and balls and fire- 
works and orations. Then I followed the call 
to America, but whenever the end of Janu- 
ary came the youthful fire of the heart flamed 
up anew. It was the one evening of the 
year which I always spent among Germans, 
and many a time in Boston or in New York, 
in Chicago or further west, I gave the toast 
to the Kaiser. Every time it was a joy to me 
when I could speak to those men and women 
who lovingly recalled their German father- 
land about the deepest meaning of the Em- 
pire's crown and scepter and about the man 



WILLIAM II 

who bears them. But never, never in my life, 
was my heart so full and my voice so throb- 
bing with joy and with pride and with sad- 
ness and with love as last night when we 
celebrated Emperor's Birthday! Never, 
never before, did I see such deep emotion in 
the faces of my German friends ! I saw tears 
in many an eye, but I saw radiant through 
them a pride in being of German blood such 
as I had never seen in German-American 
faces before. 

The combined orchestras of the three big 
German steamers which are interned during 
the war in Boston harbor played German 
music beautifully during our banquet. Be- 
fore I spoke they played the "Watch on the 
Rhine," and the whole company joined in 
singing the refrain. My first word was one 
of reproach : why should they sing a song so 
far behind the times? In 1870 the Germans 
fought to protect the Rhine, but today the 
Rhine flows peacefully in the midst of safe 
German land. Far away from it to the east 
and to the west at the Aisne and at the Vis- 
tula the German watch is needed and stands 
firm. Then I spoke of that watch of the Ger- 

7 89 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

man army and of the letters which I had 
received in the last few days from the front. 
Every one of them was bristling with con- 
fidence in victory, every one delighted with 
the spirit of the army. The prince kneels 
together with the farmer's boy in the 
trenches; all are brothers, all are passion- 
ately ready to give their lives for the life of 
the country. Above all, through every page 
shines the love and devotion to the emperor. 
If we think, I continued, of this perfect 
unity between the emperor and the people 
in arms and of this unfailing devotion of 
every one in the German nation, it may bring 
us wonderful comfort in these heavy times. 
It awakes an encouraging conviction that this 
ghastly war which three mighty neighbors 
have forced on the peace-loving German na- 
tion may, after all, turn out a blessing for 
the German people. Whether the arms will 
find success nobody can foresee, but some- 
thing can be gained which is greater than vic- 
tory in the battlefield. This self-denial of 
every member of the nation, humble or high, 
is a victory of the spirit which is endlessly 
more glorious ; and this victoiy Germany has 

90 



WILLIAM II 

already won. Germany needs no new terri- 
tory, no German wants a square foot of 
France or Kussia, but it does need to enlarge 
its territory of idealism, as it was in great 
danger of being tempted into quite other land. 
No one of us lias overlooked that that mar- 
velous development of the last decades which 
resulted from the Empire's economic policy 
of new industrialism and from its world com- 
merce brought all the dangers of self-seeking, 
of ostentation and luxury, of sensuality and 
chase for wealth and success. We believed 
in the depths of our heart that this was only 
an outside appearance, and that the inmost 
soul of the people was still loyal to the ethical 
idealism of a hundred years ago. Yet we 
saw with regret how this new realistic trend 
encroached on the finest feelings of the 
fatherland. Now in one instant the storm 
which threatens the safety of the nation has 
blown away all frivolity and all selfishness. 
The German nation has found itself again, 
and its oneness of mind is symbolized in the 
Kaiser. 

But, I went on in my toast: we do not 
think tonight only of the land beyond the sea. 

91 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

Our nearest thought is of America. The 
land to which we have given our love and 
our work has treated us cruelly. There is 
no one of us who has not suffered in these 
months unfair denunciations and thoughtless 
attacks, no one who has not felt often that 
it must be much easier to stand in the open 
battlefield and to hear the bullets whistling 
than to breathe the suffocating air of calum- 
nies and unjust vituperations. Yet the per- 
sonality of the emperor and his place in the 
nation can best remind us that we ought 
not to give ourselves over to mere despair 
concerning America's public opinion. Eead 
the newspapers of last August. Leading 
Americans came forward with passionate 
words to convince the nation that this war 
was the reckless deed of the emperor forced 
on the German nation against the national 
will. They showed us the gigantic gulf be- 
tween the imperial clique and the great peace- 
loving cultural Germany. They thundered 
against the crime which the emperor was 
committing in ignoring the will of a land of 
sixty-five millions and in brutally whipping 
it into a hopeless fight. Who is so blind to 

92 



WILLIAM n 

all evident facts, who is so deaf to all voices 
of reason, that he would still uphold a line of 
those inventions today! Even the wildest 
enemy of Germany be he in belligerent or in 
neutral country, knows today that the emper- 
or and the nation were one will from the first 
hour of this crisis. The Americans have 
learned this and know it now. May this not 
suggest the hope that they will go on learn- 
ing and that the days will come when this 
rank anti-Germanism will appear just as ab- 
surd as today the clamor of the summer 
weeks? Let us not give up the hope that 
justice will prevail and that we all shall see 
the day when the jubilant voices with which 
all America celebrated the emperor's twenty- 
fifth anniversary will resound again in cor- 
dial wishes for this greatest man of our age. 



Now Emperor's Birthday lies behind us, 
and the morning papers bring the irate let- 
ters to the editor, wildly indignant that Pres- 
ident Wilson has dared to send his congratu- 
lations to that imperial butcher of mankind 
overseas. He is the incarnation, I read, of 

93 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

brutality, the most dastardly foe of human 
culture. The Times is out of joint. I wish 
I could make the Americans see William II, 
not as in that vulgar brutal caricature with 
which Life has poisoned the imagination, 
but as he really appears as man to man ; and 
this desire did not come only with the dis- 
tress of the war. Even in times of peace I 
was always aware how mistaken the portrait 
of the emperor was, even in the minds of the 
sympathizers. I remember distinctly one 
evening when the emperor stood by the open 
fireplace, a cigarette between his lips, telling 
me laughingly what the "boy," that is the 
Crown Prince, had just written from his hunt- 
ing trip through India. At that time I sud- 
denly felt like a thrill through my mind the 
one wish that instead of me the whole Amer- 
ican nation could see this wonderful man in 
the buoyancy of his fatherly joy, in the 
sprightliness of his humor, in the incompar- 
able charm of his mood as host. Most 
Americans have always fancied the man as 
stiff and forbidding, as the severe dictator 
whose command moves millions of soldiers. 
This martial, unsympathetic portrait of Will- 

94 



WILLIAM II 

iam II with, the formidable moustache has 
done havoc with our American public opinion 
in these excited months of the European war. 
Everyone knows the mild expression of the 
face of George V, and the gentle melancholy 
features of Czar Nicholas, and the comfort- 
able philistine expression of President Poin- 
care, and the youthful look of Albert of 
Belgium. American imagination cannot 
fancy that behind such pleasant faces any 
sinister thought can slumber. But the mar- 
tial traits of the commander-in-chief of the 
German army — whose function ill will has 
mistranslated into war lord — can so easily be 
taken as a shield behind which pernicious 
plans find shelter. This absurd caricature 
has done so much to create that widespread 
feeling against the leader of the fatherland. 
How much better everybody would under- 
stand the man who now stands in the center 
of European history if all, like me that night, 
had heard his hearty laugh and had looked 
into those wonderful eyes. 

I think, indeed, that the Kaiser's sense of 
humor, which always welcomes a good story 
and which keeps him always ready for a 

95 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

hearty laugh, would bring Mm near to the 
American heart. I never saw him laugh 
more than at some good quotations from 
Mark Twain. But if anything could bring 
the man still nearer the heart, it is the beauty 
of his family life, which irradiates through 
all his personal feeling. His six splendid 
sons and his favorite child, the daughter, are 
always in his mind; and the chivalrous way 
in which he always makes his wife the lead- 
ing personage present has something really 
fascinating. In the family circle when she 
tells, perhaps of her youth or of present in- 
terests, his eye rests on her with that perfect 
delight which means a true home happiness. 
It is indeed the simplest household life, in 
spite of all the brilliant splendor of the sur- 
roundings. I saw the empress in a magnifi- 
cent evening gown with her long chains of 
superb pearls, sitting down at the emperor's 
side after dinner and crocheting for a Christ- 
mas bazaar, while the talk between the two 
and their two guests flitted hither and thither. 
In such a small circle you also see best that 
the emperor's efforts for temperance are not 
only words addressed to others, but maxims 

96 



WILLIAM II 

severely applied to himself. He hardly sips 
at a glass of wine, and even the festival ban- 
quets which in the rich Berlin private houses 
fill many hours of overluxurious feasting, 
are served in the palace with lightning rapid- 
ity. In the same way his ideas about sport 
and physical exercise, with which he has re- 
juvenated the German people, are carried out 
in his own simple and active life. He takes 
his daily long walks, rides horseback or goes 
hunting. Nature is his great love, and when- 
ever statecraft allows it he takes an outing 
to the beautiful forests of his large estates 
or to the Baltic Sea, if not to his Corfu castle 
in southern waters or to the Norwegian coast. 
This passion for nature scintillates through 
his conversation. 

Yet his chief interest belongs not to nature, 
but to culture. It is simply marvelous what 
a multitude of topics are familiar to him. 
Every science and art, every branch of tech- 
nique and of practical life, every movement 
in social reform or religion, holds his atten- 
tion, makes him think and stirs his desire to 
know more about it. Of course, he has splen- 
did chances for gaining dnforma!tion. He 

97 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

comes in contact with the leading men in 
every field. But if he had not that power 
to draw ont of the men the essentials of that 
which they have mastered, he wonld not get 
anything but superficial, blurred impressions. 
Instead of that, he has a real insight, and as 
he goes far beyond mere talk with the men 
and turns seriously to the best books in every 
field, even the specialist generally discovers 
that the emperor is fully prepared to meet 
him on his own ground. A Harvard exchange 
professor who went over to Berlin to give 
lectures on divinity assured me that he found 
the emperor able to speak on new religious 
movements with the true scholarly knowledge 
of a theologian. Yet the famous Professor 
Slaby of the Technological Institute in Char- 
lottenburg told me in almost the same words 
that the emperor speaks with him about new 
movements in engineering with the penetra- 
ting thoroughness of a trained engineer. 

But the most surprising thing is the quick- 
ness with which he can meet one after an- 
other in his own sphere. Any clever man is 
able to talk with a lot of men of diversified 
interests. The usual way is, of course, either 

98 



WILLIAM II 

to remain in trivial superficialities or to talk 
about one's own hobbies and to make the 
others listen. International congresses, 
which I have attended in abundance, give a 
splendid chance to see how completely most 
men fail when they try to do anything more. 
In America I have seen only one person suc- 
ceeding in an effort to meet everyone in his 
own field, and that was Theodore Roosevelt. 
After the Congress of Arts and Sciences 
during the St. Louis World's Fair, which 
was attended by more than a hundred lead- 
ing European scholars of all scientific de- 
nominations, the international party went 
to Washington, and I had the honor to intro- 
duce each individual to the president, who 
received them in the East Eoom. He really 
talked with philologists about philology, with 
naturalists about natural science, with his- 
torians about history, with geographers 
about geography, and with lawyers about 
law. Yet six years later I had the feeling 
that the Kaiser outdid him. It was at the 
hundredth anniversary of Berlin University. 
The scholarly master spirits of the world had 
come as delegates. After a great banquet 

99 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

in the gala halls of the Berlin castle, the 
emperor received the foreign scholars per- 
sonally, and I happened to stand quite close 
behind him. It was an intellectual delight 
to watch the versatility with which he met 
every man with interest in his particular sub- 
ject. But the feat became the more fasci- 
nating as he did not, like Roosevelt, stick to 
his native tongue, but addressed everyone in 
his own language, speaking especially French 
and English with exactly the same ease with 
which he talks German. Such an abundance 
of interests demands a sincere devotion and 
insistent study in every cultural field: and 
yet this is the man who so many Americans 
fancy has no other thought and no other idea 
but the army and militarism. 

It may be doubtful whether any of his 
peaceful interests is more lively than that 
in the United States of America. It was 
strongly increased by his brother Henry's 
visit to the new world. He would have liked 
very much to make such a trip himself, but 
as it was impossible for him to leave his 
country in the midst of restless Europe for 
such a long voyage, he wanted at least to do 

100 



WILLIAM n 

his utmost to have his family come in inti- 
mate contact with American life. It was five 
years after Prince Henry's visit that one 
morning in the Potsdam palace the emperor 
surprised me with the question what I should 
think of the idea of his sending his fourth 
son, August Wilhelm, to Harvard Univer- 
sity for a year of study. I never mentioned 
it to anyone until now. I sympathized with 
the plan most warmly. Yet I foresaw that it 
involved some difficulties and that the details 
of the scheme would have to be considered 
very carefully in order to avoid any possible 
unpleasant situations. He was to live, of 
course, like a real student; and yet certain 
obligations would fall on him. All the forms 
of his life would have to be mapped out with 
carefulness, and the emperor discussed with 
me the plans. We had left out only one item 
in the preparatory study, namely, the heart 
of the prince. He had lost it some weeks be- 
fore and became engaged a few weeks after. 
He married very soon, and that broke off the 
pleasant and interesting plan which might 
have greatly added to the cordiality between 
the United States and Germany. 

101 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

Of course, there was hardly a need of giv- 
ing new proof to the Americans of the sin- 
cere warmth of his feelings. Americans were 
his favorite guests in Kiel, in Berlin and in 
Wilhelmshohe near Cassel, where he spends 
his summers. He had inaugurated the pro- 
fessorial exchange and he made a point of 
attending the opening lectures of the visiting 
scholars from American universities. Since 
the days when Alice Boosevelt christened his 
American built yacht, he furthered the yacht- 
ing sport between Americans and Germans. 
He sent the wonderful collection of casts for 
the Germanic Museum of Harvard, many of 
which are from great works of sculpture and 
architecture never reproduced before. A 
favorite topic of his private discussions is the 
glorious feat of the Panama Canal. I have 
not heard him speaking about the political 
aspect or about the economic changes which 
the canal may bring to the world. In short, 
all which in American opinion would rush first 
of all to the mind of the ambitious ruler was 
never mentioned, but he spoke enthusiasti- 
cally about the technical triumph of the 
American engineers. Especially the electric 

102 



WILLIAM II 

control of the gigantic machines used in the 
digging of the canal with all their details 
interested him greatly. 

This unusual diversity of things to which 
he gives his attention must certainly not 
suggest that his mind passively follows in 
any chance direction without criticism. He 
has his own opinions and sticks to them 
firmly. This naturally means that there are 
many from whom he stubbornly differs, and 
who therefore may have the impression that 
he is one-sided and in some fields more 
prejudiced than they like. That has been 
noticed most often in matters of literature 
and art and music. He has decidedly a per- 
sonal aversion for radicalism in the field of 
beauty. Anything eccentric, decadent, inten- 
tionally harsh and repellent in the content or 
bizarre and unnatural in the form appears to 
him foreign to the mission of art. He wants 
art and literature really to strengthen man's 
joy in life and to bring happiness to every- 
one, and he believes firmly that that can be 
hoped for only if art is filled with the ideals 
of purity and harmony, of simplicity and nat- 
uralness, of cleanliness and morality. He 

103 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

wants inspiration from a drama and not muck- 
raking ; he wants to see God's glory in a land- 
scape and not freakish esthetic experiments. 
Yet even if the Kaiser is somewhat more 
conservative in art and literature than many 
of the artists and poets and composers, every 
sober German feels that it is, after all, only 
desirable. The opinions and feelings of the 
leader naturally have a great influence. It 
would be unfortunate if that were to be ex- 
erted for eccentric innovations. Whatever 
he may like or dislike as an individual in 
literature and art, it is his duty as emperor 
to indorse that which has slowly grown and 
which is the safe and secure product of Ger- 
man development as against the overmodern, 
often hasty demands to break out untried 
paths. The tent of the emperor must not be 
raised where the skirmishes of the advance 
guard are to be fought. The forward march 
of literature and art and science must always 
be led by individual geniuses and talents, the 
best and most brilliant must help, but only 
when the new field is conquered can the peo- 
ple as a whole follow and take possession. 
If the emperor were to rush forward with 

104 



WILLIAM II 

the most adventurous spirits in bold dashes, 
he would become just such a single individual, 
who may be now in the right and now in the 
wrong, but he would no longer be a true 
emperor, who must represent not his per- 
sonal inclinations, but the historical position 
of the whole. 

In his taste and judgment the whole his- 
tory of his nation must be crystallized, and 
for this reason the emperor fulfils his func- 
tion only if he warns against the rush toward 
eccentric innovations and remains above the 
partisanship of individuals in the realm of 
cultural endeavor. The really great individ- 
ual with talent, who has something entirely 
new to tell the world, will find his way against 
resistance, and as soon as he has produced 
decisive works, the emperor is the first to 
suppress his personal reluctance and to honor 
the genius. Eichard Strauss, whose music 
must be contrary to the emperor's instincts, 
is director at the Kaiser's court opera. But 
the chief duty of the representative of the 
people is the upholding of the sound, healthy 
and inspiring traditions against unbridled 
vagaries. There can be no doubt that the 
8 105 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

Kaiser has a distinct feeling for mellowed 
beauty, and the nation has often profited 
from his natural tact in matters of art. 

I may point to a case which concerns Amer- 
ica. When Germany was to exhibit at the St. 
Louis World's Fair, the architects had drawn 
the sketches for a great German house in the 
spirit of the newest German progressive art. 
The Kaiser disliked having Germany repre- 
sented in a foreign land by a building which 
emphasized the radical innovations of newest 
architecture. As witnesses told me, in a few 
minutes he had replaced it by a new plan. 
He drew in a few lines a sketch of the well- 
known old castle in Charlottenburg and in- 
dicated how, omitting the wings, the central 
part could be slightly modified and used as a 
model for a beautiful German building which 
would stand for the noblest traditions of Ger- 
man architecture. Exactly this plan which 
he quickly drew with a pencil was carried 
out and no one of the millions of Americans 
who flocked to the World's Fair could have 
been in doubt that Germany's house on the 
little hill in the midst of the fair grounds 
was the gem of the whole exhibition. It had 

106 



WILLIAM II 

all that dignified simplicity and harmony 
which fitted ideally into the great ivory-col- 
ored frame of the World's Fair. The original 
plan of the architects to which the Kaiser 
objected would never have succeeded so com- 
pletely. 

This conservative attitude surely charac- 
terizes also his own ideas about his position 
in the state and his task for his country. 
This is so easily misunderstood. The cari- 
catures make him appear a pompous man who 
talks in a medieval and mystical way about 
his divine rights which lift him above man- 
kind. In reality, there is not the least haugh- 
tiness in the Kaiser. He is genial and cordial 
and thoroughly human. To be sure, he would 
never stoop to any undignified behavior; he 
would never play the emperor in shirt 
sleeves ; and even in the most informal talk, 
he would always stick to a certain formality 
when he speaks about men on the throne. 
He evidently discriminates there. He spoke 
to me about his brother and his sons in the 
most familiar tone, but used regularly the 
phrase "His Majesty, King George" or "His 
Majesty, the Czar." 

107 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

But how does lie feel then about his royal 
role? He certainly does not take himself as 
a human being above others. He is far too 
much a sincere, deeply religious Christian 
to exalt himself as a person. But it is differ- 
ent with the office which has come to him by 
inheritance. He feels that that kingly func- 
tion has a meaning only if it is taken in a 
symbolic way, as if it were exempt from the 
arbitrariness of striving political parties. 
The king must stand above the individuals 
who form the state. The tradition of the 
state itself must be symbolized in the throne. 
This is indeed most fittingly expressed if in 
religious language the royal office is treated 
as if it were God-given. The crown is of 
divine grace, just as the wedding-ring is of 
divine grace. Of course, if you are radical, 
the wedding tie does not mean any more to 
you than a contract binding until you decide 
to have a divorce. If your mind tends more 
toward a conservative view, the wedding tie 
is something sacred. The emperor would 
certainly take this latter view of marriage, 
and so he takes the conservative view of the 
office of king. But do not forget, of the office, 

108 



WILLIAM II 

not of the man ! The king is more than the 
citizen only as the bearer of the office, but if 
this is understood, then it expresses the 
view which not only the emperor has of him- 
self, but which practically every German has 
of the meaning of royalty. As soon as the 
monarch is functioning in his inherited role, 
the German wants to see in him the bearer of 
a sacred symbol from which a higher power 
springs than from any elective office which 
necessarily remains dependent upon the will 
of the majority. There is nothing mystical 
in such a view. It gives strength and faith 
and inspiration to the whole nation, but the 
effect on the emperor himself is certainly 
not that of presumption, but on the contrary 
that of humbleness before God. To him it 
gives a deep feeling of responsibility and of 
duty. 

There is no contradiction in this double- 
ness of the emperor's life, no interference be- 
tween that powerful man whom the nation 
looks on as the symbol of the Empire's tradi- 
tion and who himself feels this sacred mis- 
sion, and the genial human being, full of 
humor, full of practical interests, full of most 

109 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

modern life. Do we not know such inter- 
weaving of personal life and official activity 
everywhere, even in most trivial concerns'? 
If Tom and Dick and Harry form some 
routine committee, they sit around the table 
until the meeting opens and tell stories and 
use their nicknames: yet when the time 
comes, Dick calls the meeting to order, and 
now he is no longer Dick, but the "Mr. Chair- 
man" to whose will the others are subordi- 
nated. The Kaiser knows that the history of 
his country made him chairman with the 
chairman's exalted prerogatives. But he 
never forgets that he is Dick, when he is with 
Tom and Harry, and the incomparable mag- 
netism of his personality lies in the charm 
with which he makes the one fuse and blend 
with the other. You feel at every moment in 
the glance of his great eyes the mighty 
strength of Germany's emperor and the 
simple warmheartedness of Germany's most 
delightful man. 

But for all this it is not necessary to look 
into the emperor's face and to hear his voice. 
His mind speaks no less from the speeches 
which anyone may study. Last night when 

110 



WILLIAM II 

I returned from the birthday banquet, I still 
read long in those four volumes of the em- 
peror's addresses. The American who has 
not mastered the German can find at least 
some characteristic speeches in the "German 
Classics," that magnificent twenty- volume col- 
lection of the German literature of the nine- 
teenth and twentieth centuries. It seems at 
the first glance strange to rank the Kaiser, 
who was never controlled by ambition as a 
literary man, among the classical writers of 
German literature. Yet the decision was 
right. Classical value belongs to the writer 
in whose words his nation and his time ex- 
press themselves perfectly. This test applies 
truly to the inner qualities of a man's work 
and gives the stamp of finality to his labor. 
Emperor William's speeches are indeed the 
perfectly fitting and convincing expression of 
the German mind in the age of his reign. 
Surely, the age is not a simple one; it is a 
transition period in which the old and the new, 
the passing and the coming, are often in be- 
wildering contrast. The German mind was 
torn for many years by conflicting motives, 
in high tension and restlessness. 

Ill 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

No German personality has given to the 
literature of the world such a powerful and 
such a complete expression of these opposing 
energies in the German mind as Emperor 
William II. This is the true greatness of 
his contribution to the documents of his time. 
The whole richness of the conflicting im- 
pulses, the whole complexity of the intellec- 
tual equilibrium, the whole struggle of the 
realistic and idealistic forces, find their 
natural outlet in these speeches of the polit- 
ical leader. Truly the emperor speaks and 
acts as a powerful realist, apparently un- 
hampered by any romanticism or idealism 
or mysticism. He knows and values those 
practical energies which have forged the 
tools of German industry and commerce. As 
a realist, he has encouraged every economic 
movement which would increase the strength 
of agriculture, the traditional source of Ger- 
man income, and every new tendency to 
industrialism, which has made the country 
rich. He knows that millions left Germany 
because the agrarian state could not support 
them, and that they have all found work and 
stayed at home since the net of factories cov- 

112 



WILLIAM II 

ered the land. He rejoices in the triumphs 
of German technique and in the expansion of 
German commerce. Three conditions were 
necessary for the stability and full develop- 
ment of this realistic power of modern Ger- 
many. The nation had to cultivate the inter- 
est in science, had to build a navy and had 
to secure peace. Every nerve of the em- 
peror's personality has been alive to this 
threefold task. He has wanted a more prac- 
tical, more modern education for the German 
youth, he has insisted on training through 
sport, he has pushed forward everything 
which helps the technical sciences, he has 
aided the creation of new institutes for 
scientific research: everything is carefully 
planned to make the Germans masters of the 
art of controlling nature and of imposing 
human will on the natural world. 

The new German strength, which sought 
the markets beyond the sea, necessarily de- 
manded colonies and the backing of a power- 
ful navy. This resounds solemnly through- 
out the speeches of the emperor. Superficial 
observers have treated this passion for a 
strong navy as a kind of personal whim. 

113 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

They did not understand that just this was 
not only the historical necessity of the em- 
peror's reign, but that it was above all the 
truest expression of the national longings. 
To be sure, the Germans had been satisfied 
for a long while with plowing their acres and 
with protecting their boundaries against 
their enemies, keeping cautiously away from 
transmarine adventures. But the new indus- 
trial life, which meant exchange with the 
countries of the globe, demanded the protec- 
tion of commerce. A strong navy was the 
necessary by-product of the new economic 
development and growth. And yet this is 
less than half the truth. The deeper truth 
is that this longing for the sea which fills the 
emperor's heart is deep-rooted in the soul 
of the German nation. Whoever traces Ger- 
man struggling through the past must recog- 
nize that the battle of the ships has always 
been beginning anew, since the earliest cen- 
turies of German history, and that the power 
of the sea has tempted the Germans at all 
times, from the victories of the Germanic 
tribes at the time of the great migrations to 
the 'powerful development of the German 

114 



WILLIAM II 

Hansa. It was only the history of later times 
which narrowed down the longing of the Ger- 
man people; but he who sought to renew 
the great days of German seafaring and to 
build again a powerful navy, was conserving 
for the German people its old German tradi- 
tion, deeply imbedded in the German mind. 

This realist on the throne, however, would 
be entirely misunderstood, if the idealism 
which forms the real background of his mind 
were disregarded. The emperor would not 
be the perfect interpreter of the German 
nation at the beginning of the twentieth cen- 
tury, if the realism and idealism were not so 
thoroughly interwoven in his actions and in 
his utterances. Even his relation to army 
and navy, those mighty instruments of real- 
istic energies, shows itself first of all as a 
tie of love and romanticism, of honor and 
symbolism, and every speech to his soldiers 
and sailors breathes that spirit of belief and 
enthusiasm which is never born of realistic 
calculations but of the idealistic sense for 
historic traditions. 

This idealism is reflected most immediately 
in the emperor's attitude toward religion and 

115 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

art. The third great type of attitude toward 
the world, philosophy, has not interested him 
yet. But the message of the church has cer- 
tainly filled his conscience with deep and 
intimate emotion. It is living religion which 
sounds through his sermons. But the vol- 
umes of his speeches also contain many an 
inspiring word of ideal belief in the true and 
great mission of art and beauty. He cer- 
tainly never takes art lightly, and even in the 
theater he sees the fulfilment of a sacred task. 
At the tenth anniversary of his reign, he 
made only two speeches, one to his officers, 
and one to the staff of the royal theaters. 
He said to them that his father had educated 
him in a school of idealism and that when he 
came to the throne, he felt that the theater, 
above all, is called to cultivate idealism. A 
faith in beauty ennobles his joyfulness and 
optimism. In a realistic age he believes de- 
votedly and almost naively in the inspiration 
of pure imaginative beauty. 

This idealism characterizes most markedly 
the ideas concerning his own position on the 
throne. He is fully conscious of his great 
rights and powers and asserts them in force- 

116 



WILLIAM II 

ful words; and yet nothing pervades these 
human documents so thoroughly as the spirit 
of duty and obligation and the wholehearted 
submission to the tremendous responsibili- 
ties. A tone of mysticism can easily be dis- 
tinguished in his orations, whenever he 
speaks about the role which he himself has to 
play. Yet it would again be more than hasty 
to claim that this is foreign to the German 
nation itself. On the contrary this mystical 
belief in a more than human task is the true 
meaning of the Germans' belief in monarchy, 
and here, too, the emperor is expressing only 
the instincts of his people. The emperor's 
speeches have not seldom met opposition; 
they have been criticized and have been at- 
tacked, now from this, now from that side; 
and yet, taken as a whole, they are faithful 
expressions of the conflicting impulses and 
ideas of the nation itself. Their realism and 
their idealism, their naturalism and their 
mysticism, their rationalism and their ro- 
manticism, reflect all the best which is living 
in the vigorous nation between the Baltic Sea 
and the Alps. The very contrast of their 
thoughts is their unity ; if they were less full 

117 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

of inner tension, they would not really ex- 
press the nation and the time. 

And now the time has come when ' this 
mighty soul has had to speak not by orations 
but by battles, and has had to drive his argu- 
ments home by rifles and cannons and sub- 
marines, by battlefields hundreds of miles 
long. But he has not changed. History will 
read his character rightly and future genera- 
tions will recognize clearly that behind this 
gigantic armor stood always an emperor in- 
spired by a lofty will toward peace and cul- 
ture and humanity. May he still celebrate 
as many birthdays in peaceful reign after 
this war as he did before, and may he himself 
still witness the time when the whole globe 
will be unanimous in moral respect and sin- 
cere admiration for his genius ! 



V 



GERMAN KULTUR 

I am still under the spell of last night's 
great Neutrality Meeting in Boston's classi- 
cal Symphony Hall. Here in the midst of 
the most conservative and most English tra- 
dition four thousand American citizens 
waved little American flags whenever the 
speakers shouted their indignation at Eng- 
land's arrogance. Thomas C. Hall, the great 
theologian of New York, who had come as a 
boy from Ulster, delivered the leading speech, 
the most overpoweringly eloquent speech 
which the war has brought to my ears. When 
he had ended and the discussion began, a 
voice called : "How about German militarism 
and German culture"?" Professor Hall stood 
up and with luminous eyes he simply said: 
"At the hour when the Germans heroically 

119 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

arose to break the yoke of Napoleon, they 
founded the University of Berlin ; the war of 
1870 meant the creation of the great Univer- 
sity of Strassburg ; and on the first of August, 
1914, the day on which this world war began, 
the emperor signed the decree for the foun- 
dation of the new University of Frankfort." 
Again the flags waved jubilantly. I think I 
even saw how some of the classical busts in 
the famous hall smiled a little. It was as if 
they thought in this hall at least where under 
the genius of Karl Muck the symphony or- 
chestra week after week plays Bach and Mo- 
zart and Beethoven and Wagner, it would be 
unnecessary to ask: what is German culture? 
But the question has not left me. It 
lingers in my mind because it seems to me a 
very complex problem. It has been raised 
a thousand times and has been answered with 
ridicule ten thousand times. All hatred and 
all malice have been pressed into the answers. 
The burning of Louvain and the cannonading 
of the Rheims cathedral; that is German 
culture. The names of Bernhardi and 
Treitschke and Nietzsche have been scorn- 
fully hurled at us. Well, are we sure that 

120 



GERMAN KULTUR 

even the Germans themselves always mean 
the same thing by this tantalizing word? 
What is Kultur? One negative answer can 
be given offhand : Kultur is surely not culture 
in the sense in which we accredit it to a cul- 
tured gentleman. Such culture corresponds 
most nearly to the German Bildung. Bildung 
is more than mere education, more than mere 
possession of knowledge and abilities; Bil- 
dung is that which remains when all is for- 
gotten which we have learned: it is really 
culture. But when the German speaks of 
Kultur in general, he certainly does not mean 
this inner perfection of the personality. 

The discussions of the day, however, sug- 
gest quite a number of different meanings for 
the word, and 'much of the confusion and 
misunderstanding in our American debates 
seem to spread from this lack of clear dis- 
tinction. The first meaning of Kultur, the 
original one, covers the total sum of national 
life forms and national life products. In this 
sense the Germans have always spoken about 
Kultur geschichte which surely cannot be 
translated by history of culture, but rather 
by history of civilization. The exact mean- 

9 121 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

ing of such a conception can best be charac- 
terized by pointing to its opposite. Kultur 
in the sense of Kultur geschichte stands in 
contrast to nature. Nature is the world of 
the mechanism, the world of the laws which 
bind causes and effects. In nature there is 
no freedom ; for nature no one is responsible. 
Even the inner life of man can be treated as 
such a part of nature; then man's mind ap- 
pears controlled by inner mental laws. But 
in fundamental contrast to this inner and 
outer world of law and nature stands the 
world of freedom and Kultur. Whatever 
results from man's voluntary actions belongs 
in this realm of human interests. Social and 
political, economic and religious, scientific 
and artistic life, are held together by this 
idea of Kultur. 

If this is the meaning of the word, it is 
clear that it is not a special object of glory 
or of praise, that a nation has Kultur because 
it cannot help having it. It must have some 
forms of law and religion, of agriculture and 
trade, of government and literature. These 
would remain its Kultur even if they were all 
degenerate or imitative or rudimentary. 

122 



GEEMAN KULTUR 

Whoever collects folksongs in any corner of 
the globe or even superstitions contributes 
something to the history of Kultur. Every- 
thing belongs here which reflects the soul of 
the social group, whether it be a primitive 
tribe or a world power. 

In the midst of the history of Kultur, how- 
ever, a further development of the idea can 
be traced. Lower types of Kultur became 
separated from higher types. The very com- 
plex Kultur of a country like America was 
contrasted with the less developed life forms 
and life products of countries like the Balkan 
lands, and these again with the still less 
differentiated life like that of the African 
negroes. It was perhaps not quite logical 
from the point of view of history, but cer- 
tainly the end was that only this most com- 
plex development was acknowledged as 
Kultur, the middle stage as half -Kultur and 
the lowest stage as one without Kultur. 
The historian of the world's Kultur would 
then speak first of those peoples which have 
no Kultur at all — the primitive races — would 
then turn to those who are semi-cultured and 
finally to those which really have full Kultur. 

123 



THE PEACE AND AMEBICA 

It is evident that as soon as this new shading 
had come in, the contrast to Kultur was no 
longer nature but primitive life. 

Yet this whole use of the word has no bear- 
ing on the deeper problems of national phi- 
losophy. It did not contain anything which 
was characteristically German ; the same dis- 
criminations were made in other terms every- 
where. But in the last quarter of a century 
the Germans developed a new differentiation 
on which they have put much emphasis and 
in which they have taken some pride. They 
graded the various elements of those national 
life forms which made up the Kultur of a 
people. It was asked which functions of 
national life are especially characteristic of 
the soul of the nation. Can it not be said 
that the literature and art and science and 
religion show the deepest traits of a people 
much more than the special forms of its agri- 
culture and industry and transportation and 
commerce and sanitation 1 ? As soon as that 
was acknowledged, only these more spiritual 
elements of community life were acknowl- 
edged as Kultur, and those other more tech- 
nical and material factors were bound to- 

124 



GERMAN KULTUR 

gether by tlie word civilization. In the old 
way of thinking, Kultur and civilization were 
practically the same. But in this new shape 
Kultur and civilization became exact oppo- 
sites. A land may have all the features of 
civilization and yet may have no Kultur. 
Rightly or wrongly this school claimed that, 
for instance, some of the South American 
republics have much civilization, that is, they 
have splendid electric illumination on their 
streets and the newest telephone devices in 
their offices and the best plumbing in their 
homes and the most costly gowns in their 
wardrobes, and yet have no Kultur, because 
they lack a science or art or literature or re- 
ligion which has really come from the depths 
of the national soul. Thus we have here a 
third contrast. Kultur is no longer the op- 
posite of nature or of primitive life but of 
technical civilization. Art and literature, 
science and scholarship, social reform and 
justice, public morality and religion, are the 
chief parts of its domain. 

This type of Kultur formed the background 
for those queer attacks which the neutral 
and the unneutral enemies of Germany have 

125 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

hurled against it since the war began. It 
must be demonstrated that the whole spirit- 
ual nature of the Germans is barbaric, and 
this is convincing only if it can be proved 
that they are far inferior to the really civil- 
ized peoples which are fighting against them. 
If it cannot be denied offhand that Schiller 
and Goethe, Kant and Hegel, Bach and 
Beethoven and, further back, Gutenberg and 
Luther, Holbein and Diirer and Leibnitz and 
the rest contributed some noteworthy 
achievements to the world's cultural develop- 
ment, it must at least be shown that the 
modern Germany of the last half-century is 
barren. The traditional distinction of the 
land of science and philosophy and poetry 
and music is nothing but self-advertisement, 
and the war at last brings to everyone the 
courage to tear the mask from the hypocrit- 
ical face. The sham is now exposed. Those 
so-called scholars from Humboldt and Helm- 
holtz to Koch and Behring, from Eanke and 
Mommsen to Wundt and Harnack; those so- 
called artists from Wagner to Eichard 
Strauss, from Boecklin to Klinger, from 
Hebbel to Gerhard Hauptmann, are not worth 

126 



GERMAN KULTUR 

mentioning when the French and the English 
and the American and the Russian names are 
proclaimed. It was one great delusion when 
thousands upon thousands of the advanced 
American students made their pilgrimage to 
the German universities instead of going to 
Paris and Petersburg. It was a self-decep- 
tion when all civilized nations stooped to 
imitate the social reforms of Germany. 

Queer documents of human fanaticism will 
they appear to later generations, these 
pamphlets and articles written to demon- 
strate that Germany, as Professor Mather 
says, "measured by the production of cul- 
tured individuals takes a very low place to- 
day : not only France and England, Italy and 
Spain, but also Russia and America may 
fairly claim a higher degree of culture." 
Historians of the future will read these at- 
tacks smilingly and will be reminded of the 
fact that in this barren period in which Ger- 
man scholarship was crowded out by mere 
militarism, Germany gained before the only 
international tribunal of the world by far 
more Nobel prizes than any other country, 
published at least three times more books 

127 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

than any other, developed new styles of 
architecture when even artistic France had 
become sterile, produced new forms of 
dramatic performance imitated all over the 
world, showed new ways in orchestral music, 
and led with its social reforms. 

The endless confusion and misunderstand- 
ing, however, would hardly have resulted if 
Kultur had only those three meanings which 
I pointed out. There is a fourth one which 
has come forward in the last few years and 
which is most significant for a large part of 
the nationalistic literature. It introduces an 
entirely new element and gives to the whole 
meaning of Kultur a new setting. It easily 
leads to statements which appear arrogant 
and almost grotesque if one of the older 
meanings of Kultur is substituted. Yet a 
new meaning for an old word is not decreed 
by a vote and could never come up if there 
were not mental bridges which lead from the 
old to the new. The average reader in Ger- 
many also is hardly aware that a new idea 
has found form, because the change has been 
so gradual. But the careful observer cannot 
overlook this almost surprising development. 

128 



GERMAN KULTUR 

Surprising it is indeed because it apparently 
leads back to the first idea of Kultur in its 
widest sense including all those technical 
achievements which the newer meaning of 
Kultur had eliminated. The whole civiliza- 
tion which seemed to stand outside of Kultur 
is now taken in again as it was in the old 
history of Kultur, but taken in with an en- 
tirely different original meaning. The Ger- 
man of the last phase of Germandom seeks 
in this new interpretation of Kultur the true 
meaning of Germanism. 

What is the transition, and where does it 
lead? We said science, art, literature, mo- 
rality, religion were contrasted to mere tech- 
nical civilization and raised to a special 
platform as true Kultur because they are in 
a higher degree characteristic of the soul of 
a nation. They are the true expression of 
the national mind. From here the new de- 
velopment took its starting-point. If it is 
essential for Kultur to arise from the depth 
of the national soul, it must find its fullest 
expression when it is the conscious work 
of the whole nation. The nation is not only a 
bundle of individuals; it is an organization 

129 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

which has its external form in the state. The 
true soul of the people as a whole people can 
therefore unfold most fully in the form and 
through the channels of the state. Hence a 
nation which strives toward Kultur is bound 
to make the state itself subservient to the 
furtherance of the best aims in the national 
soul. The state is no longer a simple agency 
to protect the life and property of its indi- 
viduals within the boundaries of the country 
and against outer enemies. It is not the 
state's function simply to help its citizens 
and to make them happy. Its true task is to 
raise the efforts of its citizens to a higher and 
higher level of life, to increase their contri- 
butions to the ideal values of mankind, to 
further every sound aspiration in the national 
mind and to permeate the whole people with 
the spirit of devotion to the ideals of the 
national conscience. 

Kultur now becomes inseparable from the 
idea of the state. It is no longer the scat- 
tered doings of individuals, the haphazard 
creation of artistic or scholarly or moral 
achievements and a taking part in truth and 
beauty and morality for personal individual 

130 



GEEMAN KULTUR 

reasons, but it is the total work of the nation 
in its organized form as the expression of the 
national genius. The German state is to be 
a Kulturstaat, and every function of indi- 
viduals or of groups contributes to the Ger- 
man Kultur in so far as it can be acknowl- 
edged as a part of this unified organized life 
of the German nation. Whatever is done for 
mere personal motives, for personal gain, 
for personal protection, for personal happi- 
ness, is as such indifferent for the embodi- 
ment of Kultur. But whatever is performed 
in the spirit of devotion to some aim of the 
nation as a whole has value as a part of 
Kultur. This devotion may serve the com- 
mon hope for the protection of the whole 
land or the common desire for the health and 
strength of the national body or the common 
wish for economic progress and industrial 
development just as well as the common long- 
ing for beauty and truth and morality and 
eternity. 

It is as the North American recently said : 

"When the German speaks of Kultur he means 
not only scholarship and artistic genius but all the 
developments in governmental, social and economic 

131 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

betterment. He includes expert municipal or 
scientific efficiency in industry, education and mili- 
tary training, high standards of service in public 
utilities, conservation of natural resources, effective 
measures of public sanitation, an aggressive com- 
mercial policy, amelioration of poverty and the 
elimination of uneconomic living conditions, old 
age pensions, industrial insurance and a thousand 
other results of German thoroughness in dealing 
with the problems of existence. Kultur means not 
only achievements in the arts and sciences but in 
everyday progress. It embraces not only poems 
and symphonies but dirigible airships, sanitary 
tenements and scientific sewage disposal. It covers 
the whole range of German civilization. 

This is perfectly true, but it must not be 
forgotten that this is the sense of Kultur 
only in one of those four meanings which we 
have tried to discriminate. Moreover, and 
this is the chief point, it covers the whole 
range of civilization not at all in the 
sense in which it was covered in the 
Kultur geschichte in the typical history of 
civilization with which the idea of Kultur 
began. Then every product was included as 
part of Kultur simply because it happened 
to occur in the life of a nation ; now it comes 

132 



GERMAN KULTUB 

in question under the point of view of Kultur 
only in so far as it belongs to the organized 
life of the community as a whole. We have 
seen that Kultur was in contrast first to 
nature, secondly to primitive life and thirdly 
to technical civilization: now it stands 
fourthly in contrast to all human products 
which are created for purely selfish and per- 
sonal reasons and embraces everything which 
has been guided by the organized nation with 
its community will. 

It is certainly not surprising in a period 
in which all these four interpretations of 
Kultur are intermingled in public conscious- 
ness and in which only the trend of the whole 
discussion clearly indicates which kind of 
Kultur the author meant, that much may be 
said which, torn from its background, may 
appear irritating to the outsider. On the 
basis of our last definition of Kultur a Ger- 
man may very well say about some other 
great nation that it has no Kultur. If that 
nation, for instance, considers the cultural 
unfolding a concern of the individuals and 
not of the state, if it believes in a kind of 
cultural free trade policy and declines the 

133 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

ideal of cultural protection, if it considers 
the state merely as an organization for safety 
and insurance but does not consider it the 
task of the state to further and to inspire the 
inner life, the German of this latest pattern 
of thought would be consistent if he said that 
such a nation has no Kultur. But he would 
never be so insane as to suggest by such a 
statement that such a nation lacks Kultur in 
that other sense of the word, where it means 
a natural growth of art and science and 
morality. If he is fully penetrated by the 
belief in this state Kultur, he may claim that 
this German idea of the state is more efficient 
for the total progress of mankind than any 
other type and that the cultural values will 
gain more by this German system than by 
any other form of community life. But even 
that would in no way deny that other forms 
have other characteristic advantages. They 
may not serve our Kultur Number 4, but may 
be excellent for Kultur Number 3. It is a 
pity how often in the last six months a lack 
of understanding of thesfe differences has 
led to absurd denunciations of modern Ger- 
many. The political irritation intensified the 

134 



GERMAN KULTUR 

disgust with the apparent megalomania and 
the result was a whole group of articles and 
books on the one topic: What is wrong with 
Germany? And yet there was nothing wrong 
but the interpretation with which the 
foreigners mangled the German ideas about 
Kultur. 

Only a few gross misunderstandings may 
be pointed out. The Germans, we hear, 
boast with a brutal disregard of the cultural 
achievements of other nations. Theirs is 
the best and the highest, and no other people 
has anything comparable. This becomes a 
welcome front for attack: it is Germany 
which has only a veneer of culture, while in 
its heart it lacks everything of truly cultural 
value. Its people have deep interest only 
in force and militarism, their science is ma- 
terialistic, their art deserves the ridicule of 
the world, their morality and religion are 
the cult of selfishness. Does Germany need 
a defense against such iconoclasm? The 
German is the only belligerent nation in 
which the scientific magazines are carried on 
as before : all the universities are doing their 
regular work, however many docents and 

135 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

students are at the front. Yesterday I read 
in the New York Times, which is certainly not 
under the suspicion of being pro-German, the 
following report from Germany : 

The theatrical season in Berlin has probably suf- 
fered less from the war than has that in New York. 
The theatergoer could take his pick last night, for 
instance, among Ibsen's "Peer Gynt" at the Lessing 
Theater, Strindberg's "Rausch" at the Konig- 
gratzer Theater, Strindberg's "Luther" at the 
Kiinstler Theater, Sudermann's "Honor" at the 
Residenz Theater, Sudermann's " Johannesf euer " 
at the Schiller Theater, Calderon's "Judge of 
Zalamea" at the Royal Schauspielhaus, and 
Goethe's "Faust" at the Deutsches Theater. Rein- 
hardt's offerings of the week include three per- 
formances of his new production of Shakespeare's 
"Winter's Tale" and one each of "Midsummer 
Night's Dream," "Faust" and Schiller's "Wallen- 
stein. ' ' 

Had the theaters of New York and London 
taken together in any week of peace such a 
truly artistic offering, such a really cultural 
exhibition on the highest level, as Berlin had 
on this average night of war? 

But even if I think of the theater of war it- 

136 



GERMAN KULTUR 

self, what will the historians of the future re- 
port when the moral battle smoke of today 
has cleared away. They will tell how the Ger- 
man army for military reasons was forced to 
destroy almost a fifth part of the city of 
Louvain, just as has often happened before 
in the terrible war game of the nations. But 
what was the most characteristic, they will 
add, never had happened before. In the midst 
of its punitive action the army exerted its 
greatest energy in saving the treasures of art, 
and many a soldier risked his life in protect- 
ing old Belgian sculpture. And never was 
religion more truly alive than in the nation 
which is defending its homes against half the 
world. Not the prayer of fear is on the lips 
of the Germans. From the day of the mob- 
ilization a serene solemnity took hold of the 
people, possible only in a thoroughly religious 
national soul. The archbishop of Cologne 
prayed only yesterday in the name of the 
Catholic Church for German victory in order 
that its strong religious life might not suffer 
from atheistic France and from orthodox 
Russia. 

But it is not sufficient to insist that Ger- 

10 137 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

many's culture is spiritual and its achieve- 
ments not inferior to the scientific and ar- 
tistic and religious work of any nation. In 
sober hours nobody denies that anyhow. It 
must be added with emphasis that the Ger- 
mans more than any other people have shown 
sympathy, respect, admiration and love for 
the products of foreign civilizations. No re- 
proach is more unfair and more cruel than 
the one so often repeated in the American 
papers that the Germans are haughtily care- 
less and regardless of the other nations of the 
globe. ' The Frenchman, the Englishman, the 
American travels everywhere without taking 
the trouble of learning the foreign language : 
the German, who nowadays wanders over the 
globe more than anyone, is first a patient 
pupil in the language lessons. 

But more than the language he appreciates 
the literature. No nation so persistently 
translates the serious literature of all peo- 
ples. Shakespeare is better known in Ger- 
many than in England. Many of the noblest 
works of art have been appreciated in Ger- 
many before they found a public in their 
home land. Bizet's "Carmen" was hissed in 

138 



GERMAN KULTUB 

Paris and discovered in Berlin ; and the same 
is true of almost every one of the great mod- 
ern French composers. Maeterlinck, who to- 
day cannot find bitter enough words of hatred 
for Germany, was welcomed in that same 
Germany before he was acknowledged at 
home. It is the special talent of Germans to 
enter sympathetically into the spirit of other 
peoples. They have done so in scholarly re- 
search, they have done so in esthetic enjoy- 
ment. This genius for assimilation carries 
with it many a fault. The Germans have 
often been rightly blamed for adapting them- 
selves too easily in foreign lands to the ideas 
and feelings of the surroundings. They blend 
too quickly with their social background and 
lose their national self: Americans, English- 
men, Frenchmen, never do. But then at least 
the counterpart of this defect ought not to 
be denied: they love to sink into the culture 
of other nations and to honor everything 
beautiful and noble and significant wherever 
it may be found. 

It is true that strategical necessity forced 
them after many days of patient remon- 
strance to send two shots to the tower of the 

139 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

Bheims cathedral, which was particularly 
used as a military watch post. They had no 
right to tolerate the shielding of those who 
destroyed the German regiments behind the 
beauty of architecture. They could not sac- 
rifice hundreds of lives for esthetic reasons. 
The responsibility falls on those who misused 
beauty as a weapon in war. But what nation 
has done more than the German for the study 
and the understanding of French architec- 
ture? Who has seen with greater regret the 
vandalism with which in her fight against 
Catholicism France herself destroyed in years 
of peace her beautiful churches and dese- 
crated those historic shrines of beauty. When 
in the midst of the war the new academic year 
in the German universities opened, the rector 
of Freiburg urged the students in a solemn 
speech never to carry the enmity of the na- 
tional fight into the sphere of truth-seeking 
and not to neglect in their studies the con- 
tributions of France and England toward 
scholarship. Only a complete misunderstand- 
ing of Kultur led to the inexcusable slander 
that Germany disregards the culture of other 
lands. 

140 



GERMAN KULTUR 

But another distortion of the truth has re- 
sulted still more frequently in these months 
of editorial warfare. We have heard without 
end that all the Kultur which modern Ger- 
many is seeking is nothing but an efficiency 
which mechanizes life and destroys individ- 
uality. No misunderstanding can lead fur- 
ther away from the truth. Surely that Kul- 
tur which the German wants for his country 
includes efficiency. But let it be said at the 
very start: the efficiency element in German 
Kultur is not of German but of American ori- 
gin. It is not by chance that the Prussians 
have been often called the Yankees of Eu- 
rope. The non-Prussian peoples of Ger- 
many had no natural bent toward a sharp, 
rigorous efficiency. But the Prussians, 
brought up on meager soil and under rigid 
drillmasters, had early learned the lesson of 
efficient cooperative work. When this Prus- 
sian influence became predominant in the new 
German Empire much of the old sentimental 
and lackadaisical mood of the German na- 
tion was suppressed by the energetic work 
for practical success. But, however much 
this was prepared by the tendencies of the 

141 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

Prussian element in Germany, it got its new- 
est impulse from America where the longing 
for efficiency had an entirely different origin 
from that in Prussia. The sociological con- 
ditions of American life had put a special 
premium on material success. The strong 
idealism of the American people was individ- 
ualistic and was therefore bound up with the 
self-perfection of the personality. But the 
social life was controlled by realistic purposes. 
The abundant wealth of the land had to be 
conquered. The obstacles had to be over- 
come. The dash and the cleverness of the 
American mind were brought into the service 
of this material task: the Americans became 
the pioneers of the new efficiency which mech- 
anizes the world in the service of practical 
success. The rapidly growing industrializa- 
tion of all lands made it more and more neces- 
sary to follow on this American way, and 
Stead wrote at the threshold of the century 
his famous book, "The Americanization of the 
World." When Americans now suddenly de- 
nounce this efficiency cult as German, it is in- 
deed a curious historical irony. 

The Germans, however, have not simply 

142 



GERMAN KULTUR 

copied the American method. First of all 
their energetic practical labor is backed by 
theory. To be sure, not a few of the great 
German inventions and discoveries from the 
printing press to the Rontgen rays grew in 
the midst of practical observation, but the real 
triumphs of German efficiency were won by 
deduction from theories. What Helmholtz 
and Hertz and Hoffmann, Koch and Behrmg 
and Ehrlich demonstrated in great style for 
the benefit of all mankind was repeated in a 
thousand laboratories of the country: theo- 
retical thinking guided the practical re- 
search. Last week Mr. Gilbreth, the brilliant 
American pioneer of motion study in the in- 
dustries, said to me after having spent a 
year in Germany that motion study is a thor- 
oughly American invention and that it was 
new when he brought it to Germany, but that 
there is not the slightest doubt that the Ger- 
mans will outdo the Americans in it rapidly, 
because they will back it by theoretical re- 
search. This complete fusion of systematic 
thought with practical action — in the head- 
quarters of the general staff of army and 
navy as much as in the headquarters of in- 

143 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

dustry or municipal administration or na- 
tional education — has given to German effi- 
ciency an element of thoroughness which no 
rivals so far can imitate. Yet it would be a 
complete misunderstanding to see in this in- 
tellectualized efficiency the essence of Ger- 
man Kultur. 

Efficiency, even when it is leavened by the- 
ory, remains after all an instrument of selfish- 
ness, as long as it is not made subservient to 
ideal purposes. It becomes spiritualized when 
the efficiency of a people is used not for ego- 
tistic aims of the individuals, but for the un- 
selfish furtherance of the cultural purposes. 
This is the true significance of German Kul- 
tur. The question is not whether this aim is 
really reached or whether by human short- 
coming the realization lags behind. But the 
principle must be recognized. German Kul- 
tur is the striving for ideal ends and all effi- 
ciency is only a tool for this purpose. The 
deepest source of the Kultur is not a mere 
striving for success but a devotion to eternal 
values. It is a striving for ennoblement, for 
humanity, for godliness in history. This eth- 
ical spring of national efficiency in Germany 

144 



GERMAN KULTUR 

can be traced in every sphere. It is not the 
least active where outsiders most often take 
it for granted that it fails, in the military 
organization. 

Surely, the army is the greatest organiza- 
tion for efficiency, but it is utterly wrong to 
suggest that it means the crushing of indi- 
viduality and of moral responsibility in the 
individual. A certain degree of high effi- 
ciency can indeed be reached in an army only 
if the individual merges into the whole. But 
this self-forgetting can have very different 
psychological causes. It may be the result of 
passive obedience such as is characteristic of 
the Oriental masses and evidently of the Rus- 
sian troops. Or it may result from a strong 
suggestibility of the mind, which allows every 
emotion to become contagious. It is well 
known that this is the case with the Latin and 
the Celtic races. The French army like a 
French crowd is easily swept by one emotion 
and the individual is carried away. But both 
forms of self-effacement are unfit for the 
highest efficiency because the same mental 
conditions favor a sudden reverse of feeling. 
The discouragement can spread as rapidly as 

145 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

the courage. The Germans have neither the 
Russian nor the French type. They are too 
well educated for the blind obedience, and 
their feeling life is not controlled by sugges- 
tion. The German lives in feelings, is even 
sentimental, but he is disinclined to imitate 
feelings. A wave of community emotion does 
not carry him off his feet. The German sub- 
mission to the discipline of the efficient or- 
ganization is the product of conscious will 
controlled by personal confidence in the cause 
and its leaders. 

The spirit of initiative is therefore as wide- 
awake in the German army as that of dis- 
cipline, and wherever the flagbearer falls, the 
next man can carry the colors forward. The 
German army is efficient because every man 
in the ranks is filled with a moral idea of 
responsible devotion. He feels the task of the 
army as his solemn personal duty which he 
chooses in freedom and in almost religious be- 
lief. The German army is the strongest ex- 
pression of the moral national will to fulfil 
the ethical mission of Germany, and in this 
sense it is indeed an embodiment of German 
Kultur. The idea of recruiting the army by 

146 



GERMAN KULTUR 

hiring the soldiers as in England would there- 
fore be impossible for the whole system of 
modern German thought. It is in no way 
surprising that this particular form of rigid 
discipline, held together by solemn devotion, 
makes Germany disliked in the world. It 
easily gives to the German life an element of 
sternness and rigorousness where other na- 
tions show the more pleasant, harmless sur- 
face of good-fellowship. It seems so pedantic 
and obtrusive, this atmosphere of duty, in- 
stead of the lighter elements of instinctive 
emotion and of sport which are so character- 
istic of other racial temperaments. But then 
at least this moral seriousness ought not to 
be denied to the Germans and it ought to be 
acknowledged that their efficiency is more 
than efficiency, that it is truly Kultur in the 
most moral meaning of the term. 

But a misunderstanding more unfair than 
any sets in when the German striving for 
Kultur is interpreted as a policy of force and 
conquest with the aim of a political world 
dominion. To be sure, when the declamations 
against Germany's brutal militarism as a 
means of aggression are connected with the 

147 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

present war, they are meaningless from the 
start. Germany was dragged into this war by 
the will of the three enemies who have worked 
and worked until Central Europe was encir- 
cled and until the hour for a crushing blow 
to Germany seemed to have come. Germany 
would never have chosen the war. The na- 
tion wanted to be left in peace and only in 
the defense of its homes did it carry the war 
into the territory of its neighbors. But even 
if we could blot out the last six months and 
ask whether the spirit of the German people 
with its whole German Kultur were pointing 
toward conquests or even showed a belief in 
the triumph of power, every true German 
would repudiate such a thought. Cornelius 
Tacitus says in his book about the Germans : 
"Without desire for conquest, without arro- 
gance, they live peacefully and quietly among 
themselves ; they do not provoke any war or 
devastate any lands. The greatest proof of 
their virtues and merits is that they do 
not gain their predominance by any acts of 
force, but they are all the time prepared and 
efficient in the use of weapons and whenever 
the situation demands it the army is ready, 

148 



GERMAN KULTUR 

strong in horse and men. But in times of 
peace too their reputation and glory is great." 
They have not changed in those two thousand 
years. 

Certainly Germany needed its army. It has 
often been rightly said that a dislike of war 
warrants nobody in ignoring war. The mili- 
tary service of the whole people was not Ger- 
many's invention. It was a means of defense 
in the French Revolution and was turned into 
a means of aggression through the ambition 
of Napoleon. When his army threatened to 
annihilate Prussia, Prussian militarism arose 
as a bulwark against France. But where has 
it led ? For years everybody in Germany saw 
the black clouds over the horizon all around, 
saw how billions of French money were 
turned into Russian armament, saw how 
France concentrated its energies on its army, 
how England led the preparations with mas- 
terly diplomacy, and that Germany would be 
lost if it could not rely on its sword. And 
yet, in spite of all, Russia had in its yearly 
budget one hundred million dollars more for 
its army than Germany, and England pays 
per head forty per cent, more for army and 

149 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

navy than Germany with its dreaded mili- 
tarism. If German militarism had meant 
aggression, the whole history of the last 
century would have been different. In 
the last twenty-five years England has had 
more wars than any other two nations to- 
gether: Germany kept peace for forty- three 
years. 

Does it not lie in the very character of the 
German demand for Kultur that conquest of 
foreign domain is unnatural to its instinctive 
tendencies? Kultur is the systematized fur- 
therance of the aims of the national soul. 
This must suffer if the national soul itself 
is not kept pure, if anti-German elements are 
forced into the inner national life. To win 
back Alsace meant to bring back the old Ger- 
man land; but even the fraction of Lorraine 
was held by Germany only because the mili- 
tary strategists felt sure that it was the only 
possible means to secure a time of peace for 
Germany, as with Metz in French possession 
the revanche policies of France would not 
have been restrained. Polish elements too 
had been brought into the German Empire by 
the trend of history. But they were felt as a 

150 



GERMAN KULTUR 

disturbing factor in the German system of 
Kultur, and no German had the desire to in- 
crease these inner obstacles to an ideal fulfil- 
ment of the true German mission. Germany 
may strive for the markets of the world, Ger- 
many may wish for colonial possessions where 
an overflow of its population might carry on 
peaceful labor under the flag of the father- 
land, but Germany does not desire the sub- 
jection of any non-German people : Germany 
does not long for an India or an Egypt or a 
Transvaal. Just because Germany's state is 
today efficient as a Kulturstaat, it must be 
national and must therefore respect the na- 
tionalities of others. The Kulturstaat is a 
natural bearer of peace. 

If the German mind dreams of a world in- 
fluence, it does not think of the power which 
is heralded by cannon. The German would 
not be loyal to the ideals of his Kultur if he 
did not believe in the ultimate value of its 
ideals for all mankind: from the depths of 
his soul wells up the hope that the gospel of 
German idealism will reach the hearts of all 
humanity. The German attitude toward life 
and the world, the German spirit, he hopes, 

151 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

may sometime become the yeast for the 
world's noblest civilization. 

Und es soil an seinem Wesen, 
Einmal noch die Welt genesen. 

But what a pitiful self-delusion it is when 
a world of enemies perverts this spiritual 
thought into the creed that might makes right. 
Nothing could be more foreign to the national 
conscience of Germany. 

Germany's whole inner structure is held 
together by a stubborn stand for justice in 
every human field. I always thought it a 
grave wrong when Englishmen habitually 
speak of America as the land where no jus- 
tice can be found. I remember well how it 
hurt my American sympathies when after the 
British Association in Winnipeg we traveled 
as Canada's guests throughout the land and 
one English speaker after another at the ban- 
quets played to the Canadian galleries by in- 
sisting that Canada is the land of rigid law, 
while beyond the frontiers only the money 
power decides and the highly paid lawyer can 
frustrate every law. Yet that there is a cer- 
tain core of truth has often been acknowl- 

152 



GERMAN KULTUR 

edged by Americans. Whatever the faults of 
German inner life may be, and there are 
many, this accusation that might triumphs 
over justice has never been even suggested. 
Not even the state of war can alter this stern 
sense of righteousness. The American pa- 
pers reported last week the decision of the 
German Supreme Court in which an infringe- 
ment of the patents of a Parisian were in- 
volved. The court said that Germany makes 
war against a state but not against private 
persons and that the property rights of a 
citizen of the enemy's land are in Germany as 
sacred in war time as in peace. Is it think- 
able that the state which aims to be the fulfil- 
ment of the national ideals could ever forget 
in its dealing with other states this deepest 
trait of the German soul? 

The highest ideals of righteousness and 
honor control Germany's national will toward 
other nations. But this cannot shut out from 
sight one great fundamental fact which his- 
tory teaches on every page of the world rec- 
ord. The healthy development of the nations 
from century to century, from hour to hour, 
necessarily changes the international equi- 

11 153 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

librium and brings tensions and conflicts for 
which no law and no court exists. No law 
and no court can be decisive for them, as no 
nation which respects itself and which 
is loyal to its mission and which fulfils its 
duty with honor can ever acknowledge the 
right of other nations to decide on its own ex- 
istence. Does that mean that nations return 
to the law of the jungle ? Does it mean that 
Germany has lost the moral convictions of 
Kantian and Fichtean philosophy when it 
professes that there are life hours for a 
nation in which it cannot accept without re- 
sistance the verdict of hostile judges and 
must rely on its own ultimate power? On 
the contrary, this is the spirit of Kant and 
of Fichte, provided that this power is not 
used for selfish whims, for egotistic con- 
quest, for unrighteous aggrandizement, but 
only for the one purpose of fulfilling its ideal 
mission. 

What your mission is and. your God-given 
task, no one but your conscience can tell you. 
A nation prostitutes itself, if it gives up the 
task of its Kultur under the tyrannical will 
of a foreign conqueror without making the 

154 



GERMAN KULTUR 

strongest possible use of all the energies 
which the God of history has given into its 
might. That is the idea with which Fichte 
stirred the enthusiasm of the Prussia which 
was to break the yoke of Napoleonic despot- 
ism, and this spirit was living on and came to 
words again in the wonderful orations of 
Treitschke. When his moral doctrines of the 
idealistic duties of the state were carried forth 
by less important followers, like Bernhardi, 
the purity of the thought sometimes suffered 
because English elements, reminders of the 
state philosophy of Hobbes and the later Eng- 
lish sociologists, were carelessly mixed into 
the pure German state philosophy. This was 
only natural. No nation showed to the nine- 
teenth century such mighty physical energies 
as England, which ruled the waves. Those 
Germans whose interest turned especially to 
the physical side of Germany's duty to be 
prepared against invasions of mighty rivals 
east and west, looked toward the English 
principles and methods and imitated their 
spirit. The theory of mere force, which 
had made England strong and which made 
it triumphant over half the globe, thus 

155 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

came as a false note into the German 
melody of meaner writers. Their doctrine 
of force in the service of world domin- 
ion is English; their doctrine of force in 
the service of the state's moral mission is 
German. 

The spirit of the German Kulturstaat is 
rightly understood the spirit of the moral im- 
perative of Kant, who wrote the book about 
"The Eternal Peace." Germany's enemies 
have tried to translate "Deutschland iiber Al- 
les" as "Germany in control of the world." 
Whoever has understood the meaning of Ger- 
man Kultur knows that Germany would com- 
mit suicide in the hour in which it tried des- 
potically to subject the globe to its selfish 
whim. "Deutschland iiber Alles" can never 
mean that Deutschland triumphantly crushes 
the spirit of other nations which live up to 
their historical ideals, but that it is more val- 
uable to the German than anything in the 
world, because he is filled with the grateful 
belief that his land will always remain loyal 
to its ideals. Only this is the meaning of the 
beloved song, which appears clearly in my 
daughter's translation. 

156 



GERMAN KULTUR 

German land, above all others, 
Dear above all other lands, 
Like a faithful host of brothers, 
Evermore united stands, 
And, from Maas to farthest Memel 
As from Etsch to Belt expands : 
German land, above all others, 
Dear above all other lands ! 

German faith and German women, 
German wine and German song 
In the world shall keep the beauties 
That of old to them belong, 
Still to noble deeds inspiring 
They shall always make us strong — 
German faith and German women, 
German wine and German song! 

Union, right and freedom ever 
For the German Fatherland! 
So, with brotherly endeavor, 
Let us strive with heart and hand ! 
For a bliss that wavers never 
Union, right and freedom stand — 
In this glory bloom forever, 
Bloom, my German Fatherland! 



VI 



ENGLAND 



Today is Peace Sunday in the American 
churches. From a thousand pulpits thanks 
are being offered for the hundred years of 
peace between America and England. The 
day brings strongly to my mind the memory 
of an unusual morning meeting in New York 
nearly two years ago. Under the presidency 
of Andrew Carnegie the large National Com- 
mittee for the Celebration of the Hundred 
Years of English-American Peace came to- 
gether in the hall of the Plaza Hotel to plan 
the various steps to be taken. I dropped in 
to listen to the speeches without any thought 
of taking part in the discussion. But I had 
hardly sat down in the rear of the hall when 
Carnegie's sharp eye sought me out. He in- 
sisted that I ought to contribute a word as to 

158 



ENGLAND 

what might be done to make the celebration 
perfect. His suggestion was welcomed so 
warmly that I could not decline to step for- 
ward and frankly to express my opinions 
somewhat as follows : 

I told the assembly that I had hesitated to 
accept the invitation to become a member of 
the committee, as I am a German, who as such 
hardly seemed to belong in this Anglo-Ameri- 
can enterprise, however much I have always 
felt an instinctive admiration for England. 
But I did accept the membership because the 
leaders wrote to me that it is most desirable 
that some Germans take their part in the 
movement. At this moment, I said, I feel in- 
deed that some advice from German friends 
is in order. Only we Germans who read the 
German-American newspapers are aware of 
the great alarm in the large German- Ameri- 
can population, and at the same time among 
the Irish- American population, concerning the 
peace celebration at the anniversary of the 
Peace of Ghent. Your project of erecting 
monuments with inscriptions praising the cen- 
tury of Anglo-American peace and of creat- 
ing similar symbols of Anglo-American 

159 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

friendship has aroused in large parts of the 
nation the fear that the whole movement may 
lead to a certain antagonism toward the non- 
English countries of Europe and the non- 
English elements of this nation. Of course 
this fear is unjustified : your motives are free 
from such anti-German or anti-Irish feelings, 
but the fact worthy of your attention is the 
very existence of such fears, whether justi- 
fied or not. 

The German- Americans say: this country 
is not an English country any more than it 
is a German country. It does not form alli- 
ances and it is not to play the game for any 
European nation. They feel that you sud- 
denly overemphasize the intimacy of America 
with England and that you try by that to 
give to America a strictly English character, 
as if Americans of German descent were only 
strangers and guests in this land which has 
been built up by descendants of all European 
nations. Moreover, they cannot get rid of the 
suspicion that your efforts mean a kind of 
pledge for the support of England's political 
ambitions, and everyone knows that, unfortu- 
nately, the English nation is at present mis- 

160 



ENGLAND 

led by the thought that it ought to crush the 
rising power of Germany. The German- 
American papers are full of warnings against 
this dangerous policy of giving to America 
an anti-German tendency. The German- 
Americans, as good Americans, which they 
always are, certainly rejoice in the fact that 
since the English devastated Washington in 
1814, England has kept peace with America, 
but they do emphasize that Germany was 
never at war with America. They add that 
even in those last hundred years, England's 
peace too often covered unfriendliness. Her 
stand against the Union in the Civil War lin- 
gers in the memory of those German- Ameri- 
cans whose fathers gave their blood for the 
Union. Germany has been America's sincere 
friend from the days when Steuben trained 
Washington's army to our more peaceful 
days of the exchange professorships. If your 
celebration projects arouse this emotion of 
alarm in your German- American fellow-citi- 
zens, it will not be a movement toward peace, 
but one toward irritation and quarrel; and 
that would be a most pitiful outcome. If 
this whole enterprise of the peace jubilee is 

161 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

to lead to noble, harmonious ends for the 
whole nation, let me beg you at this early 
hour to give attention to the feelings around 
you and to make clear to the world that you 
do not want to provoke anyone and that you 
do not forget that other nations have kept the 
peace with America more firmly than even 
England, for which, as I said, I have always 
felt an instinctive admiration. 

The little speech fully secured its purpose. 
The speakers who followed acknowledged that 
I had spoken a word of warning at the right 
moment, and Carnegie himself proposed fun- 
damental changes in the phrasing of the vari- 
ous inscriptions. The wording for the me- 
morial tablets which he had read at first with 
exclusive reference to England was to be 
changed so that the peace with the other na- 
tions was also to be emphasized. From then 
on the opposition rightly disappeared, and 
the peace celebration had smooth sailing un- 
til this Peace Sunday in our peaceless time. 

I wish a similar appeal for fair play could 
reach the American people today. The situ- 
ation is just reversed. At that time every- 
body praised England's peacefulness, but we 

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ENGLAND 

could fairly say Germany's desire for peace 
was of much longer standing and much more 
intense. Today everybody denounces Ger- 
many's aggressiveness, but we can still more 
fairly assert that England's aggressiveness 
is of much longer standing and much more 
threatening and a thousand times more re- 
sponsible for the dire calamities of this ruin- 
ous war. To picture Germany as a wolf and 
England as a lamb and to explain it all by 
some quotations from Bernhardi's pugnacious 
books and from Sir Edward Grey's mild 
correspondence is too ironical a fantasy to be 
fit for such grave times. 

Nobody will suggest that through the his- 
tory of the centuries down to the present day 
Germany has been a bleating lamb. Certainly 
not. The Prussia of the Great Elector and 
of Frederick the Great stood strongly for its 
rights and fought its enemies; and the na- 
tion which broke the yoke of Napoleon be- 
came conscious of its martial strength which 
triumphed in Bismarck's wars until the unity 
of the German Empire was hammered out on 
the anvil of history. This unity of the empire 
was the natural and historical goal of the Ger- 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

man mind. With the foundation of the em- 
pire under William I the longing of the Teu- 
tonic will was reached. Every energy was 
now bent toward the inner growth, toward 
the unfolding of the long inhibited economic 
forces, toward the ideal glory in the arts of 
peace. The new armor of the nation was 
planned for defense. Germany had no right 
to forget at any hour, day or night, that many 
rivals threatened its prosperous homes. It 
had to look out. It was not the trembling 
lamb: its symbol was the sharp-eyed eagle. 
But surely England's symbol was the lion, 
the mighty aggressor of the desert. 

Since the twelfth century, when England be- 
gan the dastardly crushing of green Erin, to 
the twentieth century, when it broke down the 
peaceful Boer Eepublic, England's history 
has been one of ruthless aggression. Soon 
came the day of Wales' disaster, Scotland 
was overpowered, Spain was deprived of its 
most valuable islands, Holland lost one colony 
after another, Prance had to give up its pos- 
sessions in theinew world, and throughout the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries England 
conquered islands and coasts all over the 

164 



ENGLAND 

world. India was subdued, Hongkong was 
snatched, the Cape and Natal and Zululand, 
Egypt, East Africa, and West Africa and all 
Australia could not resist. The whole globe 
is encircled by the naval stations which Eng- 
land has seized: Gibraltar looms over every 
sea of the world. There have been gigantic 
empires before. The power of Rome and 
Spain and France expanded far, but there 
has never been in mankind's memory a na- 
tion which was such an embodiment of the 
will to aggression and conquest. It is a mag- 
nificent spectacle indeed: it is the most tre- 
mendous working of human power. There is 
nothing to blame or to praise. To view the 
history of England is to me as if I gaze on 
Niagara. Nobody praises the waters of Ni- 
agara for the overwhelming strength with 
which they break down all resistance and 
flooci on to the whirlpools and on and on. But 
who would blame them for the destruction and 
death which they bring relentlessly to every- 
one in their path, even while the spray above 
the falls sparkles in all the colors of the rain- 
bow? 

The peace council changed the phrasing of 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

the inscription on the tablets and said cor- 
dially that it feels the message of peace in all 
nations, not only in England. How much 
would have been gained if the war council of 
public opinion had changed its wrong inscrip- 
tion too and had frankly acknowledged that 
the martial spirit is surely not Germany's 
alone, but that aggressors were surrounding 
her, and that the mightiest aggressor is Eng- 
land. America would have been fair and just 
and great and loyal to its world mission; it 
would have truly understood the historical 
meaning of the great hour in which the all- 
conqueror England had to live up to its role 
of ruler of the sea by daring the fight with the 
hero of the land. All petty jealousies, all 
sentimental sympathies would have become 
silent before this gigantic world struggle. 
Respect would have commanded the hour, and 
no word of humiliating abuse for either side 
would have degraded the solemnity of the de- 
cision. Even the chase for everyday com- 
mercial profit would have been halted by the 
awe and wonder: better gifts than deadly 
arms should have come from the land of the 
future. Europe needed in the turmoil of pas- 

166 



ENGLAND 

sion only one great emotion, the deep confi- 
dence in an arbiter who stands high above the 
clashing parties. It is the tragedy of the 
century that it can find in America simply 
a partisan who passes judgment on newspa- 
per clippings instead of on the great text- 
book of history. 

It is not necessary to go into the archives 
to discover the truth about the energies which 
are working today against Germany. The 
spirit of England's pitiless aggression comes 
from many a quarter to everyone who moves 
in the world. No great orators are needed 
for the message of imbitterment when hun- 
dreds and hundreds of millions are feeling 
the yoke in every corner of the globe. In any 
trivial talk it may break out. Only in the last 
two days it sounded three times on my ears. 
The day before yesterday a Hindu physi- 
cian came to see my psychological experi- 
ments, and we sat down for a talk. I care- 
fully abstained from any reference to the war, 
but I asked about the medical life of India; 
and suddenly there came an eruption of In- 
dian nationalism and Indian patriotism, and 
every word was an arraignment of England's 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

egotism and England's cruel destruction of 
the Indian nation. "London and Manches- 
ter," he exclaimed with vehemence, "are built 
on the ruins of Bombay and Calcutta. A vast 
population must starve in order to fill the 
pockets of selfish Englishmen. Those Eng- 
lish intruders have never paid any attention 
to our real demands ; in religion, in education, 
in science, in industry, in daily life, a com- 
mon Indian nationality will end this cultural 
slavery." 

And yesterday morning my genial letter 
carrier, who has been bringing the mail to 
my house for the last twenty years, came 
with a registered letter from England. In 
times of peace he never talked much about 
anything but the baseball and football of the 
students. But since the war began it is dif- 
ferent: his heart is too full, and the English 
letter made him suddenly speak about Eng- 
land with passionate words. He told me 
about the village in Ireland from which his 
father was cruelly thrown out, and all the 
Irish reminiscences bubbled up and with them 
a deep, deep hatred against England, the 
enemy. And last night I sat with a Chinese 

168 



ENGLAND 

student. We talked about the psychology of 
the hashish dreams, and from our psycho- 
logical talk he switched over to the story of 
England's opium trade with China. He re- 
minded me how the Chinese resisted with all 
their might the vice of opium smoking which 
in the middle of the seventeenth century had 
begun to creep into the national life of China. 
But the Englishmen who, after overthrowing 
all the co mm ercial rivals in the world, were 
the triumphant merchants who had no inter- 
est but the enrichment of England, insisted 
on profiting from the weakness of the Chi- 
nese population. They began in the eight- 
eenth century a gigantic poppy trade from 
India to China, and the more the Chinese 
government fought against it, the more they 
pushed the poison over the Chinese bounda- 
ries. At last when China, alarmed by this 
criminal devastation of its national energies, 
prohibited the import of this vile drug, Eng- 
land began war, in 1840 overpowered the 
weakened nation, tore away Hongkong and 
opened the land wide for an unprecedented 
trade in the poison which has ruined China. 
In the quiet Chinese way he said, almost smil- 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

ingly: "However long the list of England's 
selfish attacks against other nations in the 
world, none was more immoral and none more 
dastardly than the Opium War." 

Is it possible for a nation suddenly to dis- 
avow the energies by which it has grown, by 
which it came to its own, by which it has domi- 
nated the world? The England which had to 
fight the armada of Spain, and had to fight 
Holland and had to fight France, ultimately 
had to fight Germany, because it remained 
loyal to its destiny only as long as it tried to 
vanquish its nearest rival on the sea. I still 
believe that the great world contrast of civ- 
ilizations in this war is that between Russia 
and Germany, and its deepest meaning for 
the progress of the world would have de- 
manded that western Europe back Germany 
in the fight which Russia, aiming toward Con- 
stantinople, forced on Central Europe. But 
politically it is, after all, England's war 
against Germany, in which both Russia's de- 
sire for expansion and France's longing for 
vengeance were harnessed for the purposes of 
the British Empire. And they were har- 
nessed with masterly skill which might have 

170 



ENGLAND 

furnished many a lesson to German diplo- 
macy : crowned and uncrowned masters were 
at work. 

But how about Belgium? Did not England 
declare war on Germany because the Ger- 
man troops marched ruthlessly into the Bel- 
gian land? Was not Berlin's shameful breach 
of the sacred neutrality treaty the only true 
reason which led England, the keeper of the 
international conscience, the protector of the 
small states, the moral exponent of interna- 
tional peace, to the declaration of war? Bel- 
gium ! The time has passed by, I think, when 
a sympathizer with the German cause tried 
to argue and to struggle against those who 
are satisfied with the standardized opinions 
about the Belgian events. There were months 
in which those outbreaks against German 
honor were felt by him as humiliating in- 
sults ; the blood was rushing to his cheeks ; he 
knew that never a greater injustice was done 
than by this sullying of Germany's fair shield. 
That time is gone. The friend of Germany 
understands how many factors worked to- 
gether to give the stamp of truth to that which 
appears to him a wretched distortion ; he rec- 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

ognizes that the average reader cannot be 
blamed for forming such a judgment when 
the evidence in the trial was presented to him 
in the form in which it came to the American 
public. It surely has nothing to do with 
Americanism, as thousands of Americans who 
lived through the great weeks of the war's 
beginning on German soil are just as unani- 
mous in their conviction that Germany did 
the necessary and the right and the honorable 
thing. There are no more eloquent defend- 
ers of Germany's cause than those upright 
Americans in Berlin and Frankfort, in Dres- 
den and Munich, who have tried and tried to 
enlighten their fellow-countrymen. It is in 
vain ; and the task may just as well be given 
up. Americans are fair, and the hour will 
come when they will frankly admit that it 
was a sham trial in which they played the 
jury. Today, and as long as the war lasts, 
it is best to leave everyone undisturbed in 
his opinion. I for one shall not quarrel any 
more with those who speak to me the word 
Belgium with a tone and gesture as if noth- 
ing but hari kari is left to the German who 
loves the honor of his fatherland. 

172 



ENGLAND 

Of course, I have my own opinion, too, and 
after reading carefully piles and piles of Eng- 
lish and American pamphlets and articles, it 
has not been changed; and yet I have tried 
my life long to remain intellectually honest, 
even where my sympathies interfered. I 
should not hesitate to confess it, if I thought 
that Germany was in the wrong. I have 
worked patiently through all the technical 
arguments with which the international law- 
yers, bent on the victory of the English cause 
before the tribunal of public opinion, have 
tried to fortify the Belgian cause. But I only 
wonder, as I have so often in other great trial 
cases, at what a fine lawyer can make out of 
doubtful evidence. From my naive layman's 
point of view I got the impression that on the 
first of August, 1914, no really binding treaty 
between Germany and Belgium existed. 
England always knew that its binding 
power was ambiguous. Gladstone's famous 
speech left no doubt about it. But even if the 
treaty of 1839 had been binding, it would 
have been destroyed by the treaties which 
England made separately with Prussia and 
with France before the Franco-Prussian War, 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

because the mere assurance of England that 
a year after the war the old status ought to 
be restored cannot have legal power. A 
treaty made by five nations cannot be given 
up by three for a while, and yet remain in- 
tact. Moreover, it was annihilated by 
France's proposal to annex Belgium in 1867, 
and four years later by the foundation of the 
German Empire, which did not automatically 
take over all the obligations of Prussia. 

But even if we could fancy that all this 
might be ignored, Belgium herself had torn 
in pieces this document. In so far as the so- 
called treaty was meant at all for the protec- 
tion of Belgium it was planned for the small 
state with its meager resources. It became 
meaningless when Belgium swallowed the 
gigantic Congo State and was thus trans- 
formed into a rich world power. Yet Bel- 
gium lost her rights still more by her secret 
but not unknown partisan dealing with 
France and England. The documents which 
the German staff found in Brussels only 
proved afterward in black and white what 
Berlin had known perfectly for many years, 
that the Belgian government was constantly 

174 



ENGLAND 

scheming with the two great western nations 
for the coming European war. King Al- 
bert's government was neglecting its obliga- 
tions to Germany in these secret negotiations 
so recklessly that the leading men of France 
were even troubled by the suspicion that he 
might be playing the same false game with 
Germany against France. But there was no 
reason for the fear. The King was com- 
pletely under the control of the Parisian 
clique in Brussels. Moreover, even the con- 
spicuous plans for Belgium's defense, like the 
fortresses, were openly built against Germany 
alone, and the speeches in the chamber left 
no doubt that Belgium did not want to be a 
really neutral state. Every new military dis- 
covery has proved the justice of Germany's 
fearful suspicions. The world has seen now 
the photographs of those maps of Belgian 
lands printed with English text and with all 
the secret information needed for English 
troops supplied by the Belgian government. 
They must even have been meant for the ordi- 
nary troops, as the officers might have been 
trusted to know enough French. The parts 
in the play were all assigned before the cur- 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

tain rose. And it was only in keeping that 
English ammunition was stored a year be- 
fore in Maubeuge near the Belgian frontier 
and that French engineers worked on the Bel- 
gian fortifications and that French officers 
rushed over the frontier to Liege when the 
war broke out and that French aviators 
crossed Belgian territory in the first hours, 
all before Germany made a decision. 

American papers have made the world be- 
lieve that it was a German afterthought that 
the Allies intended to go through Belgium 
and that Germany's accusation is based on 
documents found long after the German in- 
vasion. Does anyone fancy that the British 
Review of August, 1913, had not reached Ber- 
lin in August, 1914? One year before this 
our Lord Roberts himself wrote in the Brit- 
ish Review: 

I do not think the nation yet realizes how near 
it was to war as lately as August, 1911. For many 
autumn nights our Home Fleet lay in Cromarty 
Firth with torpedo nettings down, with the gun 
crews sleeping on deck, with a live projectile ready 
in each gun, and with the war heads fitted to each 
and every torpedo. Our Expeditionary Force was 

176 



ENGLAND 

i 

held in equal readiness instantly to embark for 
Flanders to do its share in maintaining the balance 
of power in Europe. 

To embark for Flanders! For poor neu- 
tral Flanders! 

But even if Belgium stood, immaculate be- 
fore the world and with the parchment of a 
real treaty in her archives, had Germany the 
right to halt her troops at the Belgian fron- 
tiers? Without any passion I look on it to- 
day as if it were a story of two thousand 
years ago, as if Rome were fighting Car- 
thage. In this impartial historical attitude, 
I know that Germany had no choice in the 
hour of critical danger but to ask Belgium 
to allow the passage of her troops. It was 
the one act which her self-preservation de- 
manded. It is not the duty and not even the 
right of any people in the world to commit 
suicide at the command of its neighbors. If 
there is any agreement among the civilized 
nations in the interpretation of international 
laws, it surely includes this : treaties are bind- 
ing for a nation only as long as the world situ- 
ation has not so changed that the submission 
to them would destroy the nation's existence. 

177 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

The Supreme Court of the United States has 
proclaimed it clearly even on an occasion 
when an infinitely smaller injury to Amer- 
ica, the Chinese immigration, was in ques- 
tion. Gladstone stood for this principle when 
Belgium herself was discussed. No land 
would ever enter into a treaty, if this funda- 
mental idea, on which Germany acted, were 
not silently taken for granted in every pulse- 
beat of history. 

Mankind is so accustomed to this matter- 
of-course decision that the nations have al- 
most abstained from criticism when the rea- 
son for the breach of treaty was even far 
from a life need, and was only an important 
interest. Who dares to say that America 
committed a crime when it took Panama away 
from Colombia? Eoosevelt's bold action was 
historically necessary and moral. It is dif- 
ferent, to be sure, when nothing but a stra- 
tegical advantage is to be gained and no 
question of life or death for the nation is in- 
volved. When England broke through Portu- 
guese territory to fall on the Boers, when 
Russia with England's approval forced her 
way into Persia, when Japan six months ago 

178 



ENGLAND 

ignored the protests of China and marched 
through to strike against the Germans, 
the self-preservation of the peoples was 
not involved. But, of course, England has 
always had her own idea. When in 1807 
her fleet suddenly bombarded peaceful Co- 
penhagen, and Denmark was forced to give 
up her navy, not only the foreign countries 
were indignant over this brutality unheard 
of in the history of modern mankind, but the 
English population itself was perturbed and 
excited. Canning, the Prime Minister, was 
severely questioned in Parliament, but he 
simply answered: "Was it to be contended, 
that in a moment of imminent danger and im- 
pending necessity, we should have abstained 
from that course, which prudence and policy 
dictated, in order to meet and avert those 
calamities that threatened our security and 
existence, because, if we sunk under the pres- 
sure, we should have the consolation of hav- 
ing the authority of Pufendorf to plead?" 

With this background of England's 
thoughts and deeds and of the thoughts and 
deeds of the world, Germany's act stands 
clean and honest before the judgment of the 

179 



THE PEACE AND AMEKICA 

future. Germany knew that Belgium would 
not offer any forcible resistance to France 
or England. If the German armies were 
sent against Eussia and France, a sudden 
breaking of English or French troops through 
Belgium would have meant a deadly blow to 
the fatherland. But what did Germany do in 
this most critical situation ? Did it make war 
on its neighbor? American discussion has so 
confused the issue that the average news- 
paper reader has slowly forgotten the begin- 
ning and really fancies that Germany de- 
clared war with a conqueror's lust and with 
the purpose of annexing the Belgian country. 
Germany, which in a thousand years of his- 
tory has never deceived a neighbor and never 
broken a promise, promised solemnly to Bel- 
gium to repay any damage and not to retain 
a square foot of territory, if the Belgian gov- 
ernment would allow this passing of troops 
which was necessary for Germany's safety. 
If France had made the same proposition, a 
mild diplomatic protest would probably have 
been uttered, a protest which would have been 
suavely discussed after the war and which 
would have troubled the world no more than 

180 



ENGLAND 

China's protest against Japan. If Belgium 
had accepted with such a protest the demand 
of Germany, no one in the world would have 
had the right to denounce its yielding as 
dishonorable. Everybody would have ac- 
knowledged that a military resistance against 
a great army machine like that of France 
or Germany would be an absurd undertak- 
ing. Needless to say, this was a hundred 
times more true when Germany renewed its 
proposal after the fall of Liege, when the 
Belgian armies had shown their bravery. 

"Why did not Belgium confine itself to a 
diplomatic protest and yield to the greater 
power without recklessly forcing disaster on 
the industrious population? Luxemburg 
chose the path of wisdom: Belgium insisted 
on war because it was not neutral and stood 
with heart and hope on the side of Germany's 
opponents. That was the fruit of the secret 
seeds. The more the Flemish population in 
Belgium began to come to self -consciousness, 
the more the French part of the people forced 
the King into subservience to Paris. They 
knew that he had a straightforward, some- 
what narrow mind, never above opposing par- 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

ties, but easily filled by one idea. It was no 
difficult task to bring such a personality un- 
der the complete spell of the one thought of 
military honor. As soon as this decisive am- 
bition was at work, it was surrounded by po- 
litical calculations. France had the promise 
of England's Foreign Office that England 
would go with Russia and France. The Ger- 
man-Austrian game then seemed lost from the 
start. If Belgium pleased Germany it might 
draw the enmity of the future winners ; if it 
helped them, all the gains of the victory were 
hers. Of course, Belgium could not protect 
itself, but France and England promised 
immediate help. King Albert's decision 
was made: he would side with Germany's 
enemies. 

From that moment Belgium was no longer 
the small country against which Germany 
stood with its powerful army and which could 
rely on Germany's generosity to the weak, but 
Belgium was simply a part of that gigantic 
combination of countries which encircle Ger- 
many in order to crush it, and the whole 
power of the Teuton army must turn against 
its stubbornness. Yet even then the fight 

182 



ENGLAND 

would never have become so bitter, the de- 
struction never so ruinous, the misery never 
so widespread, if the turmoil of war had not 
let appear features of the Belgian mind which 
were not quite strange to those who have 
studied the history of the Congo State. Of 
all the Englishmen who have denounced 
Germany's action, none has been more vehe- 
ment than Conan Doyle. I have learned from 
the same Conan Doyle to understand the Bel- 
gian mind. Only in 1909 he wrote a book 
about the activity of Belgium in the Congo 
in which he summarizes this greatest work 
which Belgium has ever undertaken. He says 
there : 

The Belgians have been given their chance. 
They have had nearly twenty-five years undis- 
turbed possession, and they have made it a hell 
upon earth. They cannot disassociate themselves 
from this work or pretend that it was done by a 
separate state. It was done by a Belgian King, 
Belgian soldiers, Belgian financiers, Belgian law- 
yers, Belgian capital, and was indorsed and de- 
fended by Belgian governments. It is out of the 
question that Belgium should remain on the Congo. 

And as to King Albert, Conan Doyle says : 
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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

Meanwhile in August, 1909, a full year after the 
annexation by Belgium, Prince Albert, the heir to 
the throne, has returned from the Congo. He says : 
' ' What we must do is to work for the moral regen- 
eration of the natives, ameliorate their material 
situation, suppress the scourge of sleeping sickness, 
and build new railways." Moral regeneration of 
the natives ! Moral regeneration of his own family 
and of his own country — that is what the situation 
demands ! 

Yes: the Belgians made it "a hell upon 
earth" when they fell upon the natives of 
Africa, and again made it a scene of unspeak- 
able horrors when the civilians fell upon the 
German soldiers who had done their duty for 
their fatherland. The moral regeneration of 
Belgium which Conan Doyle demands had not 
come yet, and that forced on the German 
army a rigidity and severity of punishment 
for the treacherous snipers which filled every 
German heart with unspeakable sadness. But 
all this part of the cruel game came long after 
the first week of August! The distress of 
Louvain and the other Belgian places where 
the German soldiers were shot and maimed 
and poisoned by the Belgian population and 

184 



ENGLAND 

where the Germans insisted on punishments 
as a warning and protection, too easily mixes 
in the American retrospect with the clear is- 
sues of those first days of decision. We must 
force our imagination back of those days to 
the beginning in order finally to ask: is it 
true that England took part in the European 
war because Germany asked Belgium for per- 
mission to march over its roads? 

We know the complex situation of Europe 
in the last days before the war much better 
now than when the English White Paper, the 
later Blue Book, furnished the only material 
for discussion. Yet even after that most 
partisan collection of documents, it was a 
little too much to expect from the American 
public a faithful belief that treaty-breaking 
Germany had driven England into a holy war 
to protect weak Belgium's neutrality. Even 
there Sir Edward Grey reports about the 
German ambassador in London: "He asked 
me whether if Germany gave a promise not 
to violate Belgian neutrality we would en- 
gage to remain neutral. I replied that I 
could not say that. Our hands were still free, 
and we were considering what our attitude 

13 185 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

should be." And later on : "The ambassador 
pressed me as to whether he could not formu- 
late conditions on which we would remain 
neutral. He even suggested that the integ- 
rity of France and her colonies might be 
guaranteed. I said that I felt obliged to 
refuse definitely any promise to remain 
neutral on similar terms, and I could only 
say that we must keep our hands free." 

Since that time we have learned more about 
the real events. I abstract entirely from 
German sources and German publications. 
But if I study the French Yellow Book, if I 
read the captured letter of the Belgian min- 
ister in Petersburg sent to his government, 
if I read the speeches in the English Parlia- 
ment, I can foresee what the future historian 
will consider as truth, even if every German 
word is disregarded. He will say that Sir 
Edward Grey wanted this war which King 
Edward VII had prepared. He will say that 
Sir Edward Grey had given promises at 
St. Petersburg without which the Russian 
war party under the Czar's ambitious uncle 
would never have dared to begin the mobili- 
zation, two years before the planned Russian 

186 



ENGLAND 

armament was completed. He will say that 
Sir Edward Grey had bound himself in honor 
to France and had promised, in view of 
France's fleet doing work for England in the 
Mediterranean and relieving the English 
ships there, to be on France's side, if France 
would join Eussia. He will say that Sir Ed- 
ward Grey had made up his mind not to allow 
Germany to attack the northern French coast 
which was a natural part of any German 
warfare against her neighbor, as that French 
coast in German hands might threaten Eng- 
lish harbors. He will say that Sir Edward 
Grey was firmly resolved not to allow Ger- 
many to become strengthened by a victory 
over Eussia or France and that victory 
seemed sure if England were not to aid 
them. He will say that Sir Edward 
Grey was in all of these acts loyal 
to the old aggressive policy of England 
which uses all the nations of Europe in the 
service of its world dominance, and that for 
him the interest in Belgian neutrality was 
nothing but a move on the chessboard, a 
means to keep Germany from the stronghold 
of Antwerp, and above all a whip to force 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

the hesitating part of the Cabinet and of 
public opinion into line for his indomitable 
policy of English national selfishness. 

Yet if the historian enters into a subtle 
analysis, he will not forget to add many other 
elements in the surprising picture. No doubt, 
there were intervals in which Grey was him- 
self evidently frightened at the overwhelming 
consequences of his politics and in which he 
tried hard and quite sincerely to work for 
peace. For years he had tried the skilful 
maneuver of building up European peace and 
of forcing European war at the same time. 
I think he meant both in perfect sincerity. 
To be sure, not a few Englishmen see it other- 
wise. Houston Stewart Chamberlain writes : 

Sir Edward Grey had the chairmanship at all 
the conferences for the preservation of peace — in 
order to hasten the war which he planned. For 
years he was seeking an approach to Germany — in 
order that the honest German statesmen and diplo- 
mats might not notice his intention to start the 
crushing war on which he had decided. Neither 
Russia nor France really wanted the war — he, the 
pious apostle of peace, understood how to shuffle 
the cards so that they were obliged to go to war. 

188 



ENGLAND 

For the first time in the world's history the total 
English fleet was mobilized in July — but only for a 
harmless review before the King. At the arranged 
time of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke, 
a cordial visit of English warships in Kiel was still 
quickly arranged — inasmuch as all the other efforts 
to spy upon this German harbor had failed. That 
is political England today as Burke had foreseen it : 
hypocritical liars and cheats! I do not believe in 
the great power of England about which we hear 
so much. True power must have its root in moral- 
ity ; the individual Englishman is brave and sound, 
but the state England is rotten to the core. Ger- 
many is so completely different that for many years 
it was not at all able to understand the political 
England of today and was always misled by it. I 
am afraid that this may happen again in future 
and that could become a grave danger to the world. 
Therefore I as an Englishman must have the cour- 
age to testify to the truth. Only a strong, victori- 
ous, wise Germany can save us. 

This was written by Chamberlain in Octo- 
ber, 1914. 

I believe firmly that Grey's wishes to keep 
peace were just as sincere as his conviction 
that England's policy demanded an aggres- 
sive war. Only the nature of the prepara- 
tion for the two possibilities makes it inevi- 

189 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

table that the efforts which drive to war crowd 
out the mild doings for international har- 
mony. In any case, whatever Sir Edward 
Grey's game was, he still had a right to say 
in the first days of August that England was 
not bound : he had given personal encourage- 
ments all around but nowhere definite prom- 
ises which would bind the whole government, 
and the trouble had been only that his charm- 
ing personality had awakened so much con- 
fidence in all Europe that every cabinet took 
his word as the word of the British Empire. 
The cabinet had still the power to decide 
against war, and a majority of the leading 
statesmen felt decidedly that it was not Eng- 
land's duty to serve the ambitious plans of 
the Eussian military clique. There was still 
time to shake off Grey's yoke; and in that 
hour and not before, he seized upon the sav- 
ing idea. The question of power which alone 
had been in the foreground was to be replaced 
by the pretext of morality. England was not 
to go to war because promises had been made 
to Eussia and France and because it could 
not tolerate Calais or Antwerp in German 
hands, but because the small nations were 

190 



ENGLAND 

to be protected and the sacredness of the 
treaties vindicated. 

The cabinet yielded : only two members left 
indignantly. The others who submitted did 
not do so because this saintly motive im- 
pressed them, but because they trusted that 
it would impress the unthinking masses who 
always like to possess a righteous motive 
after a doubtful deed has been committed; 
and they saw above all that it would be a 
splendid help in the neutral countries. To- 
day all these facts lie entirely clear to those 
who want to see. Six months ago we did not 
know them. At that time I wrote here in the 
pages of my diary that England's pretext that 
it went to war on account of Belgium would 
appeal only to the lower middle classes and 
would not deceive many. I was entirely mis- 
taken. That one twist in the motives has done 
wonders. It was a stroke of genius: it was 
worth a fleet of dreadnoughts. I am sure a 
German statesman would never have dared to 
bring this epigram of world's history over his 
lips. It is necessary really to know all those 
facts which have slowly come to the surface 
to grasp fully the magnificence of this sublime 

191 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

gesture. I have always felt an instinctive 
admiration for England. 

It is true England has thanked Belgium 
badly for furnishing it the argument which 
cast a magic spell on the civilized globe. 
Great Britain went to war for Belgium, but 
it has brought only harm to its unfortunate 
protege. England stirred King Albert to a 
stubborn resistance, promised help and did 
not bring it, insisted on the hopeless defense 
of Antwerp and furnished pitiful troops for 
assistance. England's old game of making 
the European nations destroy one another for 
England's glory was never played more 
cruelly. When Belgium finally was ex- 
hausted, it was again England which ulti- 
mately was the cause of the suffering of the 
population, as it deprived the German gov- 
ernment of all food supplies from without. 
There would have been no need of American 
charity if Germany, which did its utmost to 
bring back normal industrial life and pros- 
perity to the afflicted Belgian country, had 
been able to import the food which was 
needed both for the German and the Belgian 
masses. The papers in Holland have re- 

192 



ENGLAND 

ported that since the fall of Antwerp the 
Belgian officers interned within the Dutch 
boundaries no longer salute the English offi- 
cers ; they feel betrayed. But in America 
many are still convinced in the depths of 
their souls that the admirable Britain went 
to war for poor little Belgium. But here, 
too, it will not last long. Even Professor 
Albert Bushnell Hart, the vehement accuser 
of Germany, says in his essay, "The Essential 
Points in the Neutrality of Belgium" : "As a 
matter of history it seems now established 
beyond all cavil that the English practically 
decided to stand by France, which must in- 
fallibly lead to war, on August 2d, and would 
have continued in that mind even if the Ger- 
mans had respected Belgium." 

But if the clever aphorism that England 
went to war on account of Belgium no longer 
misleads serious people, the more interesting 
question arises: why did England plan this 
war for so many years and why did it encircle 
and isolate Germany and bend every influence 
toward the day on which the German nation 
might be crushed? It would be superficial 
to answer that with one single reply. No one 

193 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

reason in itself would have been strong 
enough to overcome the deep and perfectly 
sincere cordial feelings with which especially 
the keepers of cultural interests in England 
reciprocated the hearty feelings of the Ger- 
mans for England. I took part in the bril- 
liant festivities which the city of Berlin 
gave to the great British commission of 
mayors and aldermen from England. At the 
public ceremonies my brother repeated the 
English speeches in German, the German 
speeches in English, and he told me how care- 
ful he was not to color too highly in the 
translation the enthusiastic words of cordial- 
ity and good will. Indeed, no deeper 
intimacy could have been imagined than that 
expressed in those summer days of German- 
English friendship ; and every tone rang true. 
This feeling of sincere amity and unity grew 
steadily: what energies overwhelmed it in 
the council of the nation and led to the tragic 
decision? Why did Asquith say in Cardiff, 
1912, that England would fight in any case? 
First of all there surely did exist a wide- 
spread feeling that the German navy threat- 
ened the historic English supremacy and that 

194 



ENGLAND 

its purposes were not the peaceful ones of 
protecting the world trade of the empire but 
that a belligerent spirit controlled it. This 
feeling of the nation was best symbolized by 
the threadbare English story, believed all 
over the British Empire, that the German 
navy officers at every banquet drank as the 
first toast "The Day" — the day on which the 
German navy would at last fight with the 
English. As there is no limit to the silly 
rumors which even serious people can believe, 
this fantastic invention spread everywhere. 
The soil was prepared for it. But who pre- 
pared it? Such a question can be answered 
by individual names only in rare cases. 
When public opinion is poisoned with per- 
verse suspicions and neurasthenic fears, it is 
seldom possible to point to the responsible 
traducer. But in this case the sociological 
source of the hysteria can be localized. It 
is a clique of newspapers controlled by a few 
spirits which have betrayed and vilified the 
unsuspicious German-English friendship. 

Yet even these masters of the craft would 
not have had such disastrous success if 
the political agitation had not found the 

195 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

ground prepared by commercial misgivings. 
Through twenty years the business world of 
England felt with growing nervousness that 
in the center of Europe a daring rival to 
English industry and world trade had ap- 
peared. In his famous essay "Of the Jeal- 
ousy of Trade," David Hume wrote in the 
spirit of a statesman, of an economist, of a 
philosopher: 

Nothing is more usual among states which have 
made some advances in commerce than to look on 
the progress of their neighbors with a suspicious 
eye, to consider all trading states as their rivals and 
to suppose that it is impossible for any of them to 
flourish but at their expense. In opposition to this 
narrow and malignant opinion I will venture to 
assert that the increase of riches and commerce in 
any one of the nations instead of hurting, commonly 
promotes the riches and commerce of all its neigh- 
bors. 

David Hume closes with the words : 

Were our narrow and malignant politics to meet 
with success, we should reduce all our neighbor- 
ing nations to the same state of sloth and ignorance 
that prevails in Morocco and the coast of Barbary. 
But what would be the consequence? They would 

196 



ENGLAND 

send us no commodities, they could take none from 
us, our domestic commerce itself would languish 
for want of emulation, example and instruction, 
and we ourselves should soon fall into the same 
abject condition to which we had reduced them. 
I shall therefore venture to acknowledge that not 
only as a man but as a British subject I pray for 
the flourishing commerce of Germany, Spain, Italy 
and even France itself. 

That was written a hundred and forty 
years ago against the narrow business poli- 
tics of the age in which France was England's 
threatening rival. It would have even more 
justice today. Germany was England's best 
customer, but every clerk in the city thinks 
with indignation of the mere possibility that 
Germany's economic development may be- 
come equal to England's. Hume would speak 
still more in vain today than in his own 
time. High finance felt German activity 
with especial discomfort. German bankers 
showed unmistakable signs of intelligence. 
It is significant that the great encircling 
policies of England began with the reign 
of Edward VII, who for the first time 
brought the great English financiers into 

197 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

the neighborhood of the throne. But the Ger- 
man steamers carried off the blue ribbon of 
the ocean and sought the remotest harbors to 
which English goods were carried, the Ger- 
man clerks dared to learn foreign languages 
in order to win the trade of the world. A 
war seemed necessary to break this relentless 
power, and the entente with France and Rus- 
sia was the more welcome as the war for 
economic purposes would not only destroy 
Germany's exports and give to England the 
chance to slip in wherever Germany lost 
the market, but it would surely at the same 
time cripple the industries of the Allies, whose 
economic rivalry seemed only a little less 
troublesome. England herself would suffer 
little and her export would grow so wonder- 
fully through the ruin of the continent that 
the loss of the trade with Germany would be 
far outbalanced. 

The political speculations of the man on 
the street did not reach far beyond such 
penny wise and pound foolish ideas. But the 
leaders in statesmanship made use of those 
political instincts of the newspaper type and 
the commercial instincts of the stockbroker 

198 



ENGLAND 

type because their wider view demanded the 
game against Germany for very different 
reasons. Tliey knew what the average man 
in London or Liverpool cannot be expected 
to consider, that the might and wealth and 
power of the British Empire and its neces- 
sary world politics center in Asia. The Eng- 
land of today stands and falls with India. 
For India's sake England needed the Cape 
in the south and Egypt in the north of Africa ; 
for India's sake it needed Australia and 
Hongkong and the islands of the Indian 
Ocean. It is exactly as Homer Lea, the far- 
sighted American, said : 

So closely associated is India with the continu- 
ance of the empire that it is by no means certain 
that an invasion of England would not be prefer- 
able to the conquest of India. In this consideration 
the wealth of India plays no part, though its 
imports and exports exceed those of the Russian 
Empire and its population and area are six times 
greater than those of Germany. Its significance is 
more portentous than the curtailment of material 
gains. Its loss means primarily that there has been 
made in the circle of British domination a gap so 
vast that all the blood and fire and iron of the 
Saxon race cannot again bring together its broken 

199 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

ends. In the wreck of India is to be found the 
Golgotha of the Saxon. 

The nation which first could become dan- 
gerous to England's Indian empire was Rus- 
sia. Its approach became most alarming. 
Here lies the deepest cause of the war which 
Japan had to fight against Russia. England 
needed that war either to weaken Russia or 
to push it toward the northeast. The pres- 
sure on India was relieved. Yet the national- 
istic movement of the Hindus has steadily 
grown. They alone are impotent, as they 
have absolutely no weapons, but any Euro- 
pean nation might come to them as a liber- 
ator. Nothing was more necessary for Brit- 
ish world politics than to concentrate the 
interest on Europe and to draw it away from 
Asia. The more Russia and France were 
bound up with the politics against Central 
Europe, the more England could hope for 
its undisturbed power in the Orient. The 
ideal would have been reached if it could 
have been done without England's entering 
into the war herself. If King Edward had 
been alive, his superior skill would surely 
have secured the European war without any 

200 



ENGLAND 

obligation for England to defend the French 
coast as payment for the work of the French 
fleet in the Mediterranean. But the lesser 
statesmen of today had to be satisfied with 
the second prize. Even if King Edward had 
made the same promises which Sir Edward 
Grey felt to be necessary, he would not have 
allowed the sentiment of the people in the 
first week of August to swell to such a point 
that the cabinet and the Parliament would 
support Grey instead of throwing him over- 
board. He would have made sure that the 
Eussian-German war would be fought for 
England's good without England's sacrifice, 
exactly as the Eussian-Japanese war was 
fought. But in any case the European war 
had to be started — ultimately because as 
O'Donnell says : "The number of human be- 
ings who persist in perennial hunger in India 
can be estimated at one hundred millions." 
I have always felt an instinctive admira- 
tion for England. But this time the admira- 
ble England has miscalculated the situation. 
Whatever the immediate outcome of the war 
may be, the hopes of England will be shat- 
tered. If it were thinkable that the Allies 
14 201 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

could really break Germany's power, only 
two nations would profit in a world historic 
style, Russia and Japan. Proud England, 
which seemed to have at least one firm plat- 
form for its European politics, that Russia 
must never reach Constantinople, has just 
solemnly and humbly declared by Sir Ed- 
ward's voice that it feels sympathy with Rus- 
sia's aspiration for the Golden Horn. What- 
ever the peace might be, it can be only an 
armistice until England's great fight with 
Russia starts; and Russia would gain tre- 
mendously by a victory over Germany and 
Austria. Even the tension with France can 
today hardly be covered. The jealousies on 
the battlefield do not count, but France can- 
not forgive England's having used the crisis 
of the war to take full possession of Egypt. 
But the greatest danger comes from Japan. 
It was not England's wish that its ambitious 
ally in East Asia grasp all the German pos- 
sessions within reach and make itself the 
master of the Pacific and begin at once to 
terrorize powerless China with the aim of 
half closing the open door. Japan has become 
the master of the East, and the nation yester- 

202 



ENGLAND 

day allied to England knows today that it 
cannot rest until it has forced itself into 
England's place in the treasure land of India. 
Even from the west new dangers have 
arisen for misguided England. Not only 
Russia and Japan will be endlessly more 
dangerous in any case but even America has 
become a source of apprehension. At the 
first glance it may look differently. England 
has succeeded in supplying America with 
news and opinions as it supplied China with 
opium. The benumbing effect is similar. 
The Chinaman smokes himself into a para- 
dise, but no less curious illusions, even if less 
blissful, have arisen from the hashish news. 
Everyone sees Europe with British eyes as 
long as the narcosis lasts. But with America 
England cannot force a new opium war, and 
when the day comes, and it must be near, 
when the Americans are unwilling to accept 
these printed drugs and the war is over, the 
truth will flood into the country. Then the 
momentary gain of the war time will evapo- 
rate and, instead of it, England may face a 
loss. It will no longer be the America of be- 
fore the war. The United States will never 

203 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

again be without a great merchant marine, 
and even today the British begin to fear it. 
The United States will expand their trade to 
South America and will have become rivals 
far stronger than in the past. The United 
States will not soon forget how they were 
unable to resist any arbitrary demands of 
England which interfered with their trade 
and made their whole commerce dependent 
upon England's grace. And the United 
States will not forget either that only through 
the alliance with England did Japan become 
able to take the German possessions in the 
Pacific and to interfere with China's com- 
mercial development, which means so much 
for America's future. America, when this 
war is over, will bend every energy toward a 
power which will secure a greater commercial 
and political independence from England's 
supremacy. Russia, Japan, France and 
America would encircle a winning England 
with appalling dangers, and through many 
a British soul today may dart the bold sub- 
marine thought that only one thing can save 
Great Britain, a noble victory by Germany. 
But England miscalculated not only the 

204 



ENGLAND 

Allies and the neutrals: England miscal- 
culated, above all, the enemy. It was not 
sufficiently aware that a great war today is 
first of all a war of technique and industry, 
both of which are ultimately based on theo- 
retical science. Men like Wells have warned 
their countrymen, knowing how far Germany 
was England's superior in the laboratory. 
Yet more important England was unable to 
feel that a modern war can succeed only if 
the whole moral strength of a nation stands 
behind the army, nay, lives in the army. All 
the odds of this war were against Germany, 
as the strongest and richest nations of the 
world were rushing against it. But if today 
no enemy is on German soil and if men like 
Admiral Bowles, who returned yesterday 
from Europe, declare in clear-cut words, 
"Germany will win," it is because the moral 
democratic spirit of the nation is more im- 
portant than numbers and treasure. Ger- 
many is indeed a great democracy in which 
all have equal duties and where the army is 
the whole nation. The time of the hired 
soldier has passed for Europe. It means 
there the immoral remnant of a time when 

205 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

wars were waged for selfish dynastic inter- 
ests. In France, in Italy, in Russia as well 
as in Germany and Austria the right of the 
citizen is bound up with the honor of defend- 
ing his country. This leads further. In a 
nation like Germany a war is impossible when 
it is only schemed by the government or by a 
few political leaders. The responsible men 
know that they could never hope for success 
unless every single man, woman and child is 
deeply convinced that the nation was unjustly 
attacked and that the fight for the country 
is a sacred cause. The mere army is nothing : 
the spirit in the home is all. In England, 
where no national army exists a war can be 
made and has been made by some few men at 
the top. Their secret agreements forced the 
issues while the members of Parliament were 
unaware of the rapid events. The moral 
democracy of Germany was underestimated 
by the oligarchy of Great Britain. Yes: he 
who lands on the British shore may well re- 
member the words of Byron's "Don Juan": 

At length they rose, like a white wall along 
The blue sea's border; and Don Juan felt — 

206 



ENGLAND 

What even young strangers feel a little strong 
At the first sight of Albion's chalky belt — 
A kind of pride that he should be among 
Those haughty shopkeepers, who sternly dealt 
Their goods and edicts out from pole to pole 
And made the very billows pay them toll. 

I've no great cause to love that spot of earth, 
Which holds what might have been the noblest 

nation ; 
But though I owe it little but my birth, 
I feel a mix'd regret and veneration 
For its decaying fame and former worth. 
Seven years (the usual term of transportation) 
Of absence lay one's old resentments level, 
When a man's country's going to the devil. 

But this Byronesque mood is not the spirit 
of the true German. We Germans have al- 
ways felt an instinctive admiration for Eng- 
land, the land of Cromwell and Burke, of 
Wellington and Nelson, of Newton and Dar- 
win, of Milton and Shakespeare. We shall 
never forget that England from Elizabeth's 
reign to that of Victoria has started the most 
important reforms of inner politics, which 
have become models for all the countries of 
the world. Its fights for constitutional rights 

207 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

and social politics have been won for man- 
kind. The excitement of the hour has made 
the anger swell in German hearts and many 
a word of hatred and many a narrow-minded 
judgment has been hissed into the world 
debate. But peace will come. Hatred and 
injustice will become silent on both sides 
when the thunder of the cannons is stilled. 
England and Germany will respect each other 
and will acknowledge that each was trying to 
fulfil a great historic mission. But the 
Americans ought to appreciate the lofty 
meaning of this tremendous battle long be- 
fore the war comes to an end. The more 
deeply they feel that the two nations, both 
eternally valuable for the ideal meaning of 
mankind, are doing their God-given duties in 
loyalty and devotion, the more they can 
contribute to the coming of the day of peace. 



VII 



LETTERS 



It would be ingratitude if I were to 
complain of the letters with which men and 
women unknown to me have overflooded 
my desk. I soon discovered: for every 
letter which assured me that my writings 
would never convince an American, I received 
five or ten or twenty which told me with sym- 
pathy and enthusiasm that the purpose of my 
writings had been fulfilled. Every mail 
brought tidings from newly won friends of 
the German cause. Fanatic enemies of Ger- 
many were gained for fairness and justice. 
It was an unbounded inspiration to me. 
How many whom I should have thought in- 
different professed their heartfelt love for 
Germany, and how many whispered timidly 
that their belief and hope was on the German 

209 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

side and that only the fashion forced them to 
silence! I was entirely unable to send a 
word of thanks to those who came to me with 
their confidence or their wishes, with their 
help or their praise or their wisdom. But if 
these lines go out over the land and reach 
the friends from Maine to California they 
may be the messenger of my warmest thanks. 
I shall never forget the blessing which these 
words of sympathy brought to me. They con- 
vinced me that the sound heart of the Amer- 
ican nation is little touched by the unfairness 
which has infested the surface layers. And 
one thing was to me most important: the 
majority of my unknown friendly corre- 
spondents were not of German descent. 

I can go still further. I received many a 
letter in which it was urged — and the ways 
were pointed out — to bring about a war be- 
tween America and England and thus to help 
the German cause: not a single one of these 
letters came from a German-American. My 
reply to such reckless propositions was on 
the whole always the same. I wrote to 
them as I wrote only a few days ago to De- 
troit : 

210 



LETTERS 

As to your plan, I have no sympathy whatever 
with it. I have the strongest wish that America 
remain neutral in this war and should consider it 
a misfortune if these United States were dragged 
into the warfare itself. My sympathies, of course, 
are on the German side, and if America were be- 
ginning war against Germany, it would be the sad- 
dest fate I can imagine. But this does not make me 
wish at all that America enter into war on Ger^ 
many's side. The agitation which you plan, how- 
ever much it may do credit to your idealism, con- 
sidering that you are an American citizen whose 
grandfather was born in France, is a plan against 
which I must warn you most earnestly. Needless 
to say, I am absolutely unwilling to support your 
agitation by any money or by any request to others 
for money. 

There was more mixture of nationalities in 
the letters which brought me helpful devices 
for a definite crushing of the Allies. Hun- 
dreds of new inventions have been submitted 
to my entirely incompetent judgment. I got 
wonderful accounts of methods to attach long 
hooks to the Zeppelins with the help of which 
generals of the hostile army were to be grap- 
pled in the midst of their staff and hauled 
up into the clouds. I received prescriptions 

211 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

how' to demolish navies, and what not. Nor 
can I forget the poetry, English, German, and 
a combination of the two, only too often ac- 
companied by the request to find a publisher 
or at least to send it to the German emperor. 
But if I abstract from all these borderland 
writings, there remains a wonderful collec- 
tion of serious letters with which I might fill 
some volumes more worth reading than many 
which are piled up on the book counters of 
the war literature today. 

Many of them come from Americans in Eu- 
ropean lands. The last one which has reached 
me brought me greetings from a much-hon- 
ored American in the Tyrol : 

My son has sent me your book on the war. I 
hasten to thank you personally for this clear, 
truthful and convincing presentation of our cause. 
I say ' ' our, ' ' for I am heart and soul in sympathy 
with the Teuton in this gigantic life and death 
struggle. So far as I know, all Americans now 
living in Germany and Austria are equally devoted 
to the two fatherlands, and the noble work that is 
being done by them in Munich and other cities is a 
proof of this fact. Personally, I have sent two or 
three articles to my countrymen, one of which at 
least has had wide circulation. Nothing, however, 

212 



LETTEKS 

convinces those who will not see the truth, and 
when I read such utterances as yours and those of 
Professor Burgess, Dr. Dernburg, President B. I. 
Wheeler, etc., and then observe the blind prejudice, 
crass ignorance and vulgar abuse still prevalent in 
America, so little affected by what has thus been 
presented, I almost despair of any change of view 
among the masses. The so-called "neutrality" of 
our nation seems to be a farce, if the shipment of 
munition and war material continues, and if the bill 
designed to prohibit it is disavowed by our govern- 
ment. How is it possible for Americans (from the 
mere standpoint of self-interest) to accept meekly 
England's arrogance in regard to searching vessels 
bound for neutral ports, and how they can still 
support a nation which has so enormously increased 
the power and pretensions of Japan, to say nothing 
of her crime in bringing colored heathen to Europe 
to fight her white, Christian kinsmen, — I cannot 
understand. But letters from America, both in 
what they say and do not say, leave me no doubt of 
the general anti-German blindness and irrational 
hostility which there prevails. 

Germans pathetically ask me what is the cause of 
this, and with shame I have to confess I do not 
know. For the Americans are supposed to be rea-i 
sonably clear-headed, as well as lovers of fair play. 
One thing I am glad to see — the foundation of such 
a paper as The Fatherland. It should have the 
widest possible circulation, and I trust that this will 

213 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

be only one of many papers, in the English lan- 
guage, devoted there to the dissemination of Ger- 
man ideals, achievements and plans. Too long 
has this representation of Germany been neglected. 
It has not been sufficient to publish articles on Ger- 
many in the German language. Americans, though 
smugly satisfied with their grossly superficial edu- 
cation, are for the most part utterly unable to read 
in the German language either books or papers! 
Steeped in English literature, English ideas, Eng- 
lish prejudices and perversions, they cannot read 
the splendid leading articles of German journals, 
the letters from soldiers, or the poems and patriotic 
appeals of the Teutonic press. Both now and after 
the war there should be some means in the United 
States of interpreting through the English language 
the character of Germany and the Germans to the 
American people. 

Of the wonderful enthusiasm, efficiency, and 
Vaterlandsliehe exhibited in Germany and Austria 
in their life and death grapple with a world of 
foes, I need not speak. You know of it, no doubt, 
through friends. I can only say that my love and 
admiration for Germany are as great as if I had 
been born a German, and again thanking you for 
your great book, I am, 

Cordially yours : 



But few would imagine how large is my 
one-sided correspondence with Englishmen 

214 



LETTEES 

who are clear-headed enough to see the world 
situation in its whole setting. These letters 
always come to me as a surprise. Here is one 
from a well-known English author with a 
whole row of degrees after his name. He 
writes from London: 

This war fills me with shame and with despair, 
since I am perfectly certain that it was brought 
about by pan-Slavist machination and that Ger- 
many is fighting on the side of truth, justice and 
civilization. . . . The English papers quote copi- 
ously from the American papers, and it is amazing 
to see how completely American opinion has been 
misled by the misrepresentation of the English 
press. Lie after lie is served up hot and apparently 
in all good faith by the American journals. The 
Kaiser, one of the greatest and best men who has 
ever lived, is represented as a bloodthirsty maniac, 
and the Germans, fighting the most heroic battle 
in the history of the world to defend their father- 
land, are represented as fiends of hell. Lies about 
Louvain, lies about Rheims, lies about the motives 
of the war, are all served up for American con- 
sumption. . . . 

This war is the greatest, most pitiful tragedy that 
has ever happened. No case could be stronger and 
more convincing than the German case : it is proved 
up to the hilt. The German ease has not been 

215 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

powerfully and successfully presented, but it is so 
overwhelmingly sound and good and strong that it 
must carry conviction when rightly put. Here in 
England the press is not free and a passionate 
pseudo-patriotism will not give a hearing to the 
other side. A few uninfluential papers publish a 
few timid milk-and-water defenses of the Germans. 
But no English paper would dare to permit the 
truth to be told by the few who have honestly 
studied, and understand it. The manifestos of th£- 
Englishmen of note in reply to those of the Ger- 
mans have been ludicrous pieces of ignorant and 
arrogant ineptitude, but the press will admit no re- 
ply to their puerile arguments. I do not like the 
Germans — forgive the remark — I have found them 
usually overbearing and brusque, but I love fair 
play and I know that in this war the Germans are 
in the right and we in the wrong. English men of 
letters have been sent to America, as you know, to 
influence American opinion against Germany. . . . 
America is not fighting, is not blinded by passion 
and prejudice and is not at the mercy of a war 
press. Why then in the name of God, in the name 
of everything that is honorable and high, are such 
wicked lies allowed to live and bear this fruit of 
death and misery ? Is there no one in America with 
a powerful pen, no one capable of championing and 
upholding the truth ? In all history, I think, there 
is no case so splendidly convincing as Germany's 
case now; in all history there is no fight so noble 

216 



LETTERS 

and heroic as the fight she is making now. And 
yet, and yet, the Americans — shrewd, truth-loving, 
peace-loving people — are being made partners, 
moral partners, in a cruel and wicked assault on a 
great heroic nation. There is not the least doubt 
that England is finding the greatest moral support 
for her immoral actions in articles in American 
papers — articles written by well-meaning but hope- 
lessly ignorant people. 

But stronger than the chorus of the Amer- 
ican and English voices swells the organ tone 
of the German enthusiasm. Every European 
mail brings warmhearted and truly inspiring 
letters from the front. Often they were writ- 
ten in the trenches, but good humor was never 
lacking. A friend on the staff of one of the 
western army corps wrote to me from the field : 

. . . "We all are firmly convinced that in spite 
of the numerical superiority of our enemies victory 
will be with us in this struggle of the nations ; from 
the oldest general to the youngest volunteer, we 
know this today more surely than ever before. The 
absolute self-sacrificing devotion of our soldiers, 
which sprung from the terrible danger to Ger- 
many and which is strengthened by the careful 
schooling in the time of peace, is really incompar- 
able. Their courage and bravery cannot be sur- 

15 217 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

passed. There is a spirit in our troops which makes 
them invincible. Oh, how I wish you could see the 
defenders of our country. A battalion of the re- 
serve has just passed my window. It has been 
lying two full weeks in the first line of defense 
without being relieved, constantly resisting the 
enemy, standing their rifle fire, in rain and storm, 
in wet mud caves. Now they are marching to rest 
for a few days in a village behind the front. The 
external state of the. men is simply awful, not a dry 
stitch to their backs. They are really covered by a 
crust of clay from head to foot. Yet their eyes 
are shining and their song comes to my ears like a 
surging wave. They are singing, "Gott schiitze 
unser teures geliebtes Vaterland, ' ' and now, fading 
away in the distance, "Haltet aus, haltet aus, im 
Sturmgebraus. " Bismarck once said, "No one can 
equal our Prussian lieutenant. ' ' Today we all say : 
"No one can equal our German soldier." Before 
the war he may have been the most quarrelsome 
Social Democrat, or the most spoiled millionaire 
pet: here in the field the one is exactly like the 
other, each endeavoring with the utmost effort of 
body and mind to do his duty, ready to give up his 
life at any moment when it is serviceable to the 
fatherland. And therefore we have a right to 
say that Germany cannot be crushed. There may 
come reverses, but ultimately our enemies will be 
overcome. . . . 

Our operations on the western battlefield pro- 

218 



LETTERS 

ceed, of course, very slowly. French and English! 
no longer offer themselves in open battle, in spite 
of their greater number; they intrench themselves 
and force us to do the same, but we are pushing 
forward on the whole front. As soon as we can 
reach the French with our bayonets, we have won. 
They cannot stand that, while they are otherwise 
courageous and persistent. In some trenches which 
we took from them in the last few nights they 
offered a desperate resistance. The prisoners we 
made gave us a solution of the puzzle. They cried 
and begged for their lives: their officers had told 
them that we kill all the prisoners. Is this not an 
abominable scheme to force the soldiers to fight to 
the last? 

Such a long war in fixed positions as we are now 
forced to carry on simplifies the activity and the 
life for us staff officers extremely. The staff sits 
behind the front and is connected with the army by 
a much ramified net of telephones. Like the nerves 
in the human body this rapidly brings all impres- 
sions of the whole great army organism to one 
center, and with the same rapidity the orders can 
be given from the commanding general and his 
staff to the army. In the moving battles such as 
we had at the beginning of the war it is quite differ- 
ent : the nerves are lacking. In distant places im- 
portant events may occur which the commanding 
general discovers only after hours. Then he must 
rely almost on intuition or he must send out his 

219 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

antennae. We officers of the general staff are then 
such antenna?. Then we have to ride and ride to 
the focus points of the fight, not caring whether the 
enemy shoots or not. But now for weeks I have 
really been outside of immediate danger, in spite 
of the fact that my army corps is in battle day and 
night. If a French aviator did not appear daily 
who tries to throw bombs into the house of our 
staff, I should feel that it is as safe as in Berlin. 
But even the aviator is not so bad: every time so 
far he has thrown his bomb far from the mark. We 
are almost glad when he comes: it brings a little 
excitement into our monotonous life. Moreover, we 
have discovered by chance a nice method to turn 
him away. In order to clean up a little of the typ- 
ically French dirt in the village we had to remove 
the gigantic heaps of manure which were lying on 
all the streets. We had them carted to the sur- 
rounding fields. The piles, which with Prussian 
accuracy were made of equal size and arranged in 
straight rows, must have looked from above like a 
camp with tents. We cannot find any other ex- 
planation for the fact that the bombs of the avia- 
tor are now always thrown into this row of manure 
heaps. But we may be satisfied with it. 

Besides aiding in the direction of the battle it- 
self my chief work is the feeding of the corps. Al- 
most forty thousand men and nine thousand horses 
expect their rations from me. That sometimes 
needs much thought. Every week we get a whole 

220 



LETTERS 

trainload of pigs from Germany. These charming 
animals can no longer be bought in northern 
France, but cattle are plenty. I have set up a flour 
mill and a sawmill, and now I have even established 
a little dairy which has to furnish fresh butter 
daily. 

Among the hardships which the war brings, I 
feel especially the lack of music. The regimental 
bands have lost many men, and above all, the 
musicians have to help in the transport of the 
wounded. But we have recently discovered in a 
field hospital a young surgeon who sings with a 
beautifully trained voice and with perfect artistic 
rendering. Moreover, we have a non-commissioned 
officer of the artillery who is a professional pianist, 
and in a castle near by we found a piano which 
with true French feeling got all out of tune when 
we Germans marched in. But we have tuned it up 
again and now we have some really delightful 
musical evenings. 

You want to know why I got the iron cross sec- 
ond-class. Today I can even report that in the 
meantime I have received the iron cross first-class 
and the medal for bravery. This is how it hap- 
pened. . . . 

That is how the "barbarians" write from 
the battlefield. But I have always felt as if 
the hardest part is left to those who have to 
stay at home. Their bravery, their self-sac- 

221 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

rifice, their faith, is marvelous. In hundreds 
of letters never a word of complaint, and the 
women still more heroic than the men ! Again 
I open a letter which came only yesterday. It 
is a professor in quiet Gottingen who writes : 

. . . You are, of course, well informed about the 
happenings in Germany during the war. To be 
sure, no report can replace the personal experi- 
ence — the tremendous experience of this war. The 
routine life continues its ordinary course. Seen 
from without the changes appear really insignifi- 
cant. Not the least privation is felt. The indus- 
trial life has adjusted itself with astonishing 
rapidity to the war situation. Naturally there is 
much, far too much, mourning. But how different 
the way in which it is borne and endured! The 
feeling that every death means a sacrifice volun- 
tarily offered gives a lofty dignity and raises the 
individual suffering into a sphere above all in- 
dividuality. We hardly live any longer as private 
persons. Everyone experiences concentrated in 
himself the life of the whole nation, and this gives 
to every experience its tremendous momentum. All 
the tense, passionate striving, all the endeavoring, 
all the sorrowing, all the conquering and all the 
dying of the soldiers in the field — all enter collec- 
tively into the feeling and suffering of every one of 
us. All the poisonous calumnies, all the pestilent 

222 



LETTEBS 

winds of a selfish neutrality, blow against every one 
of us. We believed at first that we should break 
down; and yet we have learned to bear it. The 
confidence too has become concentrated. A mag- 
nificent stream of national will to win, floods 
through everyone of us and gives us an undreamt- 
of strength of will in this terrible national loneli- 
ness. 

To bear and to overcome in ourselves this feeling 
of national isolation — that was the hardest test. 
Our splendid soldiers out in the field — my two 
sons, like all the able-bodied students in Gottingen, 
are in it too — are resisting the enemy in the mud of 
the trenches, under unspeakable hardships, no day 
without being under fire, no night in a bed, the wet 
clothes never changed, in the midst of ghastly im- 
pressions, surrounded by the bodies of the dead; 
and when they press forward they rush on with 
ringing song. Truly it is a marvelous heroism ; and 
yet the defiling froth of calumny is dashed upon it. 
They have gone out to fight this war in the Fichtean 
spirit as a truly sacred war, and to offer themselves 
with full hearts as a sacrifice for the fatherland; 
and now they are pilloried before the world as atro- 
cious barbarians. And America? Our astonish- 
ment was beyond measure. We did not expect any 
help, but understanding and at least justice. 
America ! What an ideal image we had in our souls 
of the new America. We believed in a new idealism 
and dreamed of a new world period when the ideal- 

223 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

ism of America would blend with the rejuvenated 
faith of Germany. The wave of our astonishment 
has ebbed. We have learned to bear this disap- 
pointment too. "We no longer speak of it. It is 
understood that among the shells which the French 
used and of which originally sixty per cent, were 
failures, now hardly ten per cent, do not explode 
since they are imported from America. It accords 
with the reports from the front ; the list of our dead 
and maimed is growing. They have to suffer. "We 
say only: America! and remember the beautiful 
words of President Wilson, words of purest ideal- 
ism, concerning neutrality. We have become so 
firm and hardened that we now do not fear even 
the neutrals — we have never feared the enemy. 
Hence we hope that we shall be able to carry it 
through and that God will continue to be with us, 
as we are so humbly endeavoring to prepare a 
worthy altar for him in our feelings and our in- 
tentions. 



VIII 



TOMORROW 



This is the sixth day of March. While I 
am sitting at my desk here in my Cambridge 
study, the room seems filled with the waking 
memories of another sixth of March. In 
1902 on this date a festive assemblage had 
gathered within these walls. Prince Henry 
of Prussia stood here as the representative 
of his brother, the German Emperor, and he 
was surrounded by a large and impressive 
group of Germans whose names are today 
familiar. In their center stood Admiral Tir- 
pitz, the controlling mind of the German 
navy today. On the other side was the 
American group, Admiral Evans and David 
J. Hill, later ambassador to Germany, and 
many another, in their midst President Eliot 
in his academic gown. Prince Henry for- 

225 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

nially presented the documents by which the 
German emperor gave treasures of German 
art to the Germanic Museum of Harvard Uni- 
versity and he handed a portfolio with pic- 
tures of the gifts to the president of the uni- 
versity, with a speech which surveyed the 
history of the American-German friendship. 
President Eliot offered the thanks of the uni- 
versity with his well-known mastery of cere- 
monious speech. All present believed that 
in accordance with the programme the formal 
act was closed. But suddenly Prince Henry, 
inspired by the significance of the hour, 
moved forward once more and spoke with 
ringing voice from the depths of his heart. 
Now he did not look backward, but into the 
future: he spoke luminous hopes and cordial 
wishes. It was felt like the thrill of a his- 
toric moment when in the name of the Ger- 
man emperor he ended with the words : "May 
the true friendship, based on genuine under- 
standing and good will, never cease between 
the United States and Germany!" And to- 
day? Today! ! 

# # # * 

The war came more quickly than anyone 

226 



TOMORROW 

had thought possible : perhaps it may end as 
quickly too. But whether it ends tomorrow 
or the day after tomorrow, we all know the 
peace will come: how will the world look 
when this terrible struggle finally comes to 
an end? Will anything be fundamentally 
changed or will everything go on as before, 
as if the world simply woke after a night of 
turbulent and anxious dreams f It is easy to 
champion either side in the great historic 
issues of the coming days, and yet all the 
exclamation marks together do not remove a 
single question mark. We may even show 
the psychological necessity of this or that de- 
velopment, and with the same subtlety prove 
the opposite too. It is a bad day for the 
prophet. We know our hopes and our 
prayers, but a dark fog still hangs over the 
valley of peace into which the next turn of 
the road must lead us. 

Will the future be pacificist or belligerent? 
Those who know the laws of the mind can 
well understand that the appalling horrors 
of this world war will deeply impress the soul 
of everyone who lives through it and that 
their children and children's children will 

227 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

still be haunted by the ghastly specters of the 
battlefield. There will be a fear of war and 
a craving for peace. But alas, the psycholo- 
gist knows also the mental laws of adaptation 
and inhibition. Our modern mind was no 
longer adjusted to the sights and emotions 
of a real war. Now it has become adapted 
to them. The resistance has been broken 
down. The transition from peace into war- 
fare has become easier for the mind. The 
inhibition has disappeared. "War and peace 
are more in the balance. It is always the 
first step only which is difficult. It appears 
so natural that for a century to come the 
great nations should be in the habit of 
settling their disputes in the trenches. "Who 
dares to say today that he foresees that the 
one group of mental functions which leads 
to lasting peace, or the other group which 
makes war perpetual, will dominate the 
twentieth century? 

The first Punic War was followed by a 
second and a third. Yet on both sides the 
nations at war today feel that their struggle 
would be meaningless if they cannot bring 
home from the battlefield assurance of peace 

228 



TOMORROW 

for at least a hundred years. Every nation 
is ready to drench the soil with her blood 
because she hopes that from such ground the 
olive trees of the future will grow more beau- 
tifully than ever. Every Frenchman and 
every Englishman dreams that this is a war 
against warmaking and that if they win, 
peace will be secured forever from the mettle- 
some militarism of Germany. In the same 
way the humblest German soldier writes from 
the trenches his trust that Germany will not 
close the war until a century of peace has 
been forced on the envious neighbors. 

"While each of the belligerents hopes to 
secure the lasting peace by crushing its 
enemy, the neutrals put their faith in the 
natural growth of the pacificist movement. 
They are convinced that after the world 
nightmare of this war the moral men in every 
moral nation — and certainly at the core every 
nation is moral and in every nation the over- 
whelming majority of men is moral — will in- 
sist on agreements by which the repetition of 
such a clash will become impossible. Militar- 
ism and navalism, secret governmental prom- 
ises, commercial manufacture of ammunition, 

229 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

and all the other schemes by which war is 
precipitated, must stop forever. A small 
police navy and an international army for 
the handcuffing of recalcitrant national cul- 
prits, together with a solid system of inter- 
national assurances, will be sufficient for the 
age to come in which the manufacturers and 
bankers instead of the diplomats and ad- 
mirals will control the intercourse of the 
races. 

Yet is the eternal peace really nearer? 
Have we not been hearing for a long time 
that the marvelous growth of the socialistic 
party in all European countries would make 
a war impossible and that the interests of 
trade had linked the nations so perfectly that 
the interests of capital would work for peace 
under all circumstances'? Is the mistrust of 
secret diplomacy a new discovery of last 
August? Have those who have been the 
spokesmen of the peace movement through 
the last two decades really furthered the 
quick ending of this horrible war ? The man 
who called the first Hague Peace Conference 
was the first to mobilize his army and to 
threaten Europe, and the smaller apostles 

230 



TOMORROW 

showed us many a "road to peace" but they 
themselves insisted on avoiding them. To 
those who read history only from the news- 
papers, the outlook appears more promising 
than to those who have studied the pacificist 
movements of the last two thousand years. 
Carnegies and Norman Angells have lived in 
every age, and some previous centuries like 
the sixteenth and seventeenth have seen much 
more intense efforts toward lasting peace 
than the twentieth. 

It is easy to tell us, as Mr. Dickinson does, 
that the whole misery comes from the fic- 
titious idea that a man has not only to look 
out for his personal interests but for the 
interests of a state. The individual farmer 
or workingman or clerk or professional man 
does not gain anything from the warlike 
deeds of the state. But is the world ready 
to swallow this doctrine of indifference to the 
national ideals ? Surely there are few Amer- 
icans today who would not gladly express 
themselves in favor of lasting peace for their 
country. But there would probably be still 
fewer who would not loudly cry for war if 
Russia took South America or if Japan 

231 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

colonized Mexico. There is nothing gained if 
the Carnegie doctrine is adhered to only until 
it pleases the nation to prefer the Monroe 
Doctrine. This conflict of emotions occurs in 
every vigorous nation. In 1906 the President 
sent to Congress a message in which he said : 
"War is not only justifiable but imperative on 
honorable men and an honorable nation when 
peace is to be obtained only by the sacrifice 
of conscientious conviction or national wel- 
fare." The overwhelming majority of man- 
kind has agreed with the spirit of that mes- 
sage through thousands of years. Is it safe 
to calculate that between today and tomorrow 
the human instincts will be reversed? 

Above all, is any nation to be blamed if it 
does not yield to the destruction of its cul- 
tural existence without the utmost resistance 
by all the mental and physical energies at its 
disposal? War can be the lowest of national 
activities, but war can be the highest. A war 
carried on for selfish interests of leaders, 
fought out with hired soldiers, serving 
materialistic purposes only, is a sordid busi- 
ness indeed, degrading the fighter in victory 
no less than in defeat. But a war in which 

232 



TOMORROW 

the army is the nation itself, in which the will 
of the commander is the will of the humblest 
and in which everyone enthusiastically offers 
his own life and the lives of his beloved ones 
and all which he possesses for the one pur- 
pose that his nation may remain loyal to its 
God-given task — such a war is sacred and 
stands morally higher than any conference in 
which diplomatic lawyers wrangle about 
paragraphs. 

Whether the future will be adorned by 
peace or torn by new wars cannot possibly be 
foreseen today. But this can be foreseen: 
the peace of the great nations will depend 
entirely upon their good will and cannot be 
imposed on them by force. Any agreements 
of majorities which leave ill will and indig- 
nation in those who are bound down give not 
the slightest promise for peaceful develop- 
ments. Peace can come only from within. 
As soon as the civilized nations are filled 
with the real sense of inner peace, the time 
will come when international agreements will 
naturally grow; they may help to postpone 
martial conflicts and to find compromises 
where compromises are possible. But they 
16 233 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

must be the ripe fruit; they must be the end, 
not the beginning. To start with such agree- 
ments when the tears of the war are not yet 
dried would be only a new diplomatic mistake 
at the end of the war added to the many at 
the war's beginning. It would be inexcusable 
if the conferences which must end this world 
war were burdened with labors to find new 
international schemes by which the peace of 
the future may be secured. Two years after 
the date when the last prisoner has gone 
home, it will' be right to negotiate about new 
international forms to insure international 
good-fellowship. Then it will be in order to 
broaden the international laws, to create in- 
surance against war and international police 
forces. But any such method worked out 
while the pulses are still beating hotly would 
be nothing but another form of war measure 
and therefore a new source of irritation and 
indignation, and that means ultimately of 
new wars. 

Least of all, could anything be gained for 
lasting peace by crushing and humbling any 
of the belligerent nations. The discussions 
about changes in the map of the world have 

234 



TOMOREOW 

so far hardly been of serious character, even 
when serious men speak in serious papers. 
No magazine is more dignified than the North 
American Review; no man in days of peace 
more authorized to speak than Yves Guyot, 
who was for years Minister of Public Works 
in France : and what results when the Review 
and the Minister come together? Mr. Guyot 
tells us that the Allies will be entirely "dis- 
interested" and will take hardly anything for 
themselves. Germany will only have to pay 
six billion dollars indemnity, give up Alasce- 
Lorraine, give up a further western territory 
to straighten the frontiers, give up in the east 
the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, in 
the north the Kiel Canal and in the rest of the 
world its colonies. Moreover, it will be dis- 
membered, and, of course, the Hohenzollerns 
will be expelled, and so on. And all this is 
presented with a serious face at an hour when 
three million German soldiers have been 
occupying for half a year the countries of the 
Allies, while not a single enemy is in Ger- 
many with the exception of three-quarters of 
a million prisoners. 
But even if such humorous fantasies are 

235 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

ignored, the discussions as to the immediate 
results of the war are on both sides too much 
tainted by a hatred which makes true peace 
impossible. Every German is, of course, ab- 
solutely convinced that Germany will win. 
But what would happen if Germany were 
defeated? The English papers — and nobody 
will blame them for it — take it for granted 
that this defeat is inevitable. What is their 
view as to the terms which the Allies will dic- 
tate in Berlin ? The London Nation, The New 
Statesman, and many other English maga- 
zines discuss the problem on a dignified level, 
and yet how gravely do they err ! They dis- 
pute which of the two treatments will better 
secure the European peace, the strictly penal 
treatment which cripples Germany and makes 
it destitute so that in its poverty it is never 
to be feared again or the educational treat- 
ment which humbles the nation morally until 
the Prussians feel that their policies were 
criminal and until they are buried under the 
contempt of the non-Prussian Germans who 
will then begin a modest but decent life. 

The second of the two amiable methods will 
not do for a simple reason: it is impossible. 

236 



TOMORROW 

Germany's harvests can be destroyed, Ger- 
many's industries can be paralyzed, Ger- 
many's sons can be slain; but however the 
body of the nation may be mutilated, as long 
as its soul lives, it will know that this war 
was the greatest spiritual victory which Ger- 
many ever won and that the country was 
never greater and never worthier of every 
German's proudest love than in this hour. A 
truly neutral observer, a Swiss, who in many 
ways does not like the Germans, wrote in an 
article published last week: "The Germans 
have their faults by which they have made 
themselves disliked in many parts of the 
world, but today they stand before us in the 
blinding splendor of the most beautiful Ger- 
man virtues, and the sincere neutral spec- 
tator can see Germany today only with a 
feeling of the highest respect." If French 
and Russian troops were marching today 
through the streets of Berlin, the Germans 
would regret that their military machine was 
not strong enough to resist the attacks of the 
world, and they would acknowledge that their 
diplomats had made mistakes, and they would 
be sorry for many a defect in their technical 

237 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

preparations, but morally they would feel 
themselves the victors. 

Yet there remains that other scheme. Ger- 
many might be trampled down until it is phys- 
ically devastated as it was after the great 
religious wars of the seventeenth century. 
But is this tempting scheme really safer, if 
the goal is to eliminate war? Can anyone 
dream that the alliance of today can survive 
tomorrow, that England, France, Russia, 
Servia and Japan will vote on the same side 
in any conference when once the battle smoke 
has cleared away? This alliance was team 
work for a definite purpose. In the per- 
petual striving of the nations there came one 
historic moment in which the two great an- 
tagonists, England and Russia, necessarily 
had a common wish, the crippling of Ger- 
many. That one common impulse brought 
them together for one day's common work. 
But if the sun were setting over their com- 
mon success, the next morning would neces- 
sarily find them the old embittered enemies 
who wrangle about Asia. Never would Ger- 
many's power be stronger than in the hour in 
which it had to decide whether Central Europe 

238 



TOMORROW 

ought to go with England against the Rus- 
sian Empire or with Russia against Great 
Britain. To cripple Germany means to has- 
ten the hour in which this battle between 
England and Russia must be fought, and 
compared with that fight, the war of today 
may appear only as the preamble. 

Or does anyone imagine that Japan's career 
in the world is ended? Japan's war against 
Russia yesterday and against Germany today 
were only the two first forward steps toward 
its destiny as it is felt by every patriotic 
Japanese. Is it difficult to foresee the next? 
The enmity of Japan and Russia quickly 
turned into brotherhood when the aim was to 
capture Kiau-Chou. The friendship between 
Japan and England will turn just as quickly 
into enmity when the hour comes to throw the 
British out of India. In the turmoil of the 
war lies the public has hardly discovered 
what a daring game Japan played in the Far 
East in the name of its alliance with England. 
England had to keep silent but the truth is 
that Japan acted much more against the 
wishes of England than in England's interest. 
When Kiau-Chou fell, England's influence in 

239 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

the East began to fall too. My German 
friends may not pardon me for saying it, 
and yet I know what I am talking about: 
Japan is today a better friend of Germany 
than most of the so-called neutral nations. 
Japan, Eussia and Germany may be the team 
tomorrow, and then France will be on their 
side. They will all feel in common : Caeterum 
censeo Cartaginem esse delendam. 

It is not Treitschke, it is not a German but 
an English professor, and not one of the 
dozens, but the master mind whose books 
have been more read than those of any other 
Englishman during this war; it is Professor 
Cramb of Oxford who says that war is "a 
phase in the life effort of the state toward 
completer self-realization, a phase of the 
eternal nisus, the perpetual, omnipresent 
strife of all being toward self-fulfilment." 
"War is "a manifestation of the world spirit 
and coextensive with being and as such insep- 
arable from man's life here and now." "In 
the light of history universal peace appears 
less as a dream than as a nightmare which 
shall be realized only when the ice has crept 
to the heart of the sun, and the stars, left 

240 



TOMOREOW 

black and trackless, start from their orbits." 
Yes, wars will come after the peace of Berlin 
as after many another solemnly sealed peace 
of Europe. But if there is one thing in the 
world which could postpone the next out- 
break, it would be a German Empire which 
feels that it need not soon be afraid of an 
attack, because it has shown to the world 
that it can defend itself quite alone against 
the greatest combination of hostile powers 
which the world has ever seen and which no 
future alliance could match. Such a Ger- 
many would have only the one passionate 
interest, to devote every energy to the arts of 
peace and to help toward a peaceful solution 
of every conflict on the globe. But a Ger- 
many stirred by indignation over the brutal 
force of seven combined powers which self- 
ishly encircled and destroyed the young ideal- 
istic nation, such a Germany would have no 
right to yield to the joys of peace : it could not 
rest until the hour of justice came. The happy 
Germans would rush to the farms and the fac- 
tories : the indignant Germans would stay in 
the trenches. Whoever says let us humble 
Germany, says let us make peace impossible. 

241 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

Does this mean that Germany hopes from 
this war a domination over the world by 
which the independent power of any other 
nation is to be broken? No assault against 
Germany's honor is more dastardly and at 
the same time more grotesque than such an 
assertion. Germany's aim in this war is en- 
tirely clear to anyone who wants to see. First 
of all, it did not want the war. Since it has 
confessed its shortage of wheat, it must be 
evident even to the most ignorant that the 
war was not of Germany's making, as if it 
had intended to go to war or had even fancied 
that a near war were possible, Germany could 
easily have provided itself with ample food 
before the mobilization. But now since it 
has had to defend itself and since every home 
has had to bring the blood sacrifice, the Ger- 
mans are resolved that this struggle must not 
be in vain and they have a clear end in mind. 
The war which they began as a defense of 
their homes has become a struggle for the 
equal rights of the nations. Germany does 
not want to dominate the world, but neither 
does Germany want to tolerate a supremacy 
of England which makes all other seafaring 

242 



TOMORROW 

nations dependent upon England's whim. 
Century after century England and France 
and Russia have expanded and expanded, 
while the great German Empire, weakened by 
its religious wars, lost more and more ground. 
Even in the last quarter of a century they 
won domination over millions and millions of 
square miles and today England and Russia 
possess half the globe and use their tremen- 
dous empires to keep down the German nation 
as if it were still the poor neighbor of two 
hundred years ago. By its civic virtues, by 
the energy and industry and morality of its 
people, the German nation has become strong 
and rich and has a right to ask for the same 
free air to breathe which the others have al- 
ways enjoyed. Germany fighting for equal 
rights is fighting the battle of progress. 

What are her enemies fighting for? We 
hear the claim that there also stands a prin- 
ciple behind England's fight, the principle of 
popular government as against autocracy 
armed with militarism. Popular government, 
in England ! Its symbol is evidently Sir Ed- 
ward Grey, who forced this war on the nation 
by his promises in Petersburg and Paris with- 

243 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

out the knowledge of his cabinet, without the 
knowledge of his King, without the knowledge 
of the Parliament. In Germany every move 
was the move of the whole people; in Eng- 
land every move was the move of a clique. It 
cannot be otherwise, if the nation's war in 
Germany must be fought by the sons of every 
family, while England hires its soldiers and 
sends Gourkhas and Sikhs against its Ger- 
man cousins. 

We do not know whether this war will 
bring to the twentieth century peace or war- 
fare, equality or tyranny : we know no better 
whether it will bring nationalism or inter- 
nationalism. The leading impulse of our 
time is surely today as it has been through 
the last few decades, an increasing sense of 
national selfhood. The man on the street 
even if he feels really neutral expects that 
this war will help to give to every racial ele- 
ment in Europe its independence. Of course, 
everybody knows that there are hardly any 
pure races in Europe with the exception of 
the Irish, the Basques and the Finns, and 
that the great nations over there are just as 
much products of the melting pot as modern 

244 



TOMOBBOW 

America. Yet everybody hopes in the spirit 
of our time that all the artificial suppressions 
will stop and that the lines of language will 
be more firmly respected. The Poles ought 
to have their Poland and the Finns their Fin- 
land and so on. Their chief point, to be sure, 
is usually that Alsace-Lorraine ought to go 
back to France and Schleswig-Holstein to 
Denmark. Yet what is the historic situation ? 
Those good nationalists forget how much lar- 
ger the German Empire was in its medieval 
boundaries; how from the battle of Tannen- 
berg in the east in the fifteenth century to 
the days of Napoleon, Germany's neighbors 
have torn one piece after another, east and 
west, from the German lands. 

Germany would arise larger than any Ger- 
man dreams today if it were really to receive 
back all the old German soil with truly Ger- 
man racial population. Is Germany to annex 
the Bussian Baltic provinces with the old 
German cities of Eiga and Dorpat? And is 
the world ready to offer the old German 
provinces of Flanders and Brabant to Ger- 
many? Too few who see on the stage Lohen- 
grin, the true German hero, step from his 

245 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

swan boat to the German soil, welcomed by 
the German king, the embodiment of Ger- 
man life, are aware that all this is happen- 
ing in — Belgium. Are those Belgian prov- 
inces in which the population is not of 
Eomanic descent to be united again with Ger- 
many? Only three million Belgians are 
French; about four millions are Flemish, of 
German descent. The German character of 
Alsace is beyond doubt. In large parts of 
Alsace the farmers never spoke anything but 
German. The Germans would probably not 
object, if the peaceful nationalistic settlement 
were to end with their giving up French Lor- 
raine and a Polish strip of Posen in exchange 
for the large Baltic provinces of Eussia and 
four-sevenths of Belgium. 

The true nationalistic hope of Germany is 
quite different. If Germany is victorious, it 
does not dream of restoring the great Ger- 
man Empire of the Middle Ages, it does not 
want to govern provinces, but to inspire them. 
Those lost old German lands have themselves 
become weak and half-hearted since they lack 
cultural strength of their own. How modest 
has become Holland's part in the world's 

246 



TOMORROW 

culture in recent centuries! The spirit of 
Rembrandt and of Diirer was the same. If 
Germany's influence in Europe should be 
strengthened again, all the broken off parts 
would find a new cultural backing and would 
at last come to their own again. The Ger- 
man Empire might not grow by a square foot, 
and yet Germany together with German Aus- 
tria, with German Switzerland, with Flemish 
Belgium, with Holland, with the Baltic prov- 
inces of Russia, with Denmark, Norway, Swe- 
den and Finland, would form a cultural world 
empire which would balance the Romanic 
group of France, Italy, Spain, and the Anglo- 
Saxon group and the Russian-Asiatic group. 
But while the tendency toward the em- 
phasis on national racial differences is evi- 
dent, the opposite desire for the effacing of 
lines of separation cannot be overlooked 
either. The whole misery of this war, we 
hear, resulted from the petty jealousies of 
nations which ought to have learned long ago 
and who surely must learn now through this 
suffering that they belong together, yes, that 
they are ultimately one. In the time of the 
railway and telegraph, when the same news 

247 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

is in every newspaper of the world the same 
morning, and when the same goods are in 
every shop-window of the whole civilized 
world, when science and art and technique 
and social reform of all peoples are inter- 
woven and interdependent, it is absurd to 
make much of political boundaries which 
fitted the dynastic egotisms of a clannish past. 
The United States of Europe must be the next 
goal, and not a few expect to see this new 
republic develop in the midst of the peace 
conference with the lightning rapidity with 
which the Chinese Republic was established 
over a hardly smaller territory the other day. 
Has not the past shown that the small coun- 
tries can easily combine into large ones? 
Did not the states of Italy and the states of 
Germany, like the states of America, form 
indissoluble unions? Why not the quarrel- 
some states of Europe? Since the German 
Empire was founded it is impossible that 
Saxony should make war on Bavaria. The 
United States of Europe would once for all 
expel the fury of war from European soil. 
Yet the instincts of Europe are radically 
averse to such a negation of two thousand 

248 



TOMORROW 

years of cultural history. The European 
dream of peace pictures the most cordial and 
intimate exchange of national cultures, but 
never the disappearance of these national in- 
dividualities. A colorless cosmopolitanism 
would reduce the world to the lowest terms of 
mere rational business efficiency with good 
care for health and technical comfort ; but the 
sources of inspiration would dry up and the 
days of great achievement would be past. 
The more the international contact secures 
mutual stimulation, the more each nation 
must give its best from the bottom of its 
national character. It is quite true that 
Saxony and Bavaria would no longer fight 
with each other since they are parts of the 
United States of Germany, but that is pos- 
sible only because their feeling as Saxons 
and Bavarians is entirely submerged in the 
stronger feeling of being Germans. The citi- 
zens of Leipzig in Saxony and of Munich in 
Bavaria can change their residence without 
losing their German background, which gives 
meaning to their essential interests. But if 
this same unity is to bind the states of 
Europe, the citizens of London and of Petro- 
17 249 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

grad, of Berlin and of Madrid, would have to 
feel too that they remain on the same back- 
ground, if they exchange their dwelling- 
places. This feeling would presuppose a 
flabby indifference to all the energies which 
have created the progress of mankind. Then 
we might choose Volapuk instead of the lan- 
guage of Shakespeare, of Voltaire and of 
Goethe. 

The true internationalism which is to come 
must mean a more intense will to give and to 
take in the intercourse with the national 
neighbors. But nobody can take with real 
profit and nobody can give, who has lost his 
own. This internationalism in which all the 
different national instruments play together 
in the harmony of the orchestra will surely 
grow as never before, but every nation will 
and ought to remain jealous of its right to its 
own instrument. Even the diversity of gov- 
ernmental forms will probably not be influ- 
enced much by the great catastrophe of this 
war. Europe has outlived the immature 
period in which it enjoyed rationalistic discus- 
sions as to the greater merits of republican or 
monarchical governments in abstracto. Eus- 

250 



TOMORROW 

sia would not become freer if it should change 
into a republic, and France would not become 
more despotic if it made a war-leader king. It 
will not make much difference whether Poland 
or Finland become kingdoms or republics. 
The form of the great historic states will 
surely not change. They are products of a 
historic growth in which the deepest meaning 
of those nationalities is expressed. 

It is still more difficult to foresee what 
changes will come in the individual states. 
Will the inner political life become more con- 
servative or more liberal? Will the centrip- 
etal or the centrifugal energies prevail when 
the war is over? Militarism means centrali- 
zation, means a discipline of the millions, a 
subordination under a central will. A war 
must therefore reduce the rights of the indi- 
vidual, and in this sense exert a reactionary 
influence. But at the same time militarism 
stands for equality. At the front all meet the 
bullets of the enemy alike, in the trenches all 
are brothers. All the artificial differences 
disappear, life is brought back to the rockbed 
of human feeling. This means a war is liber- 
alizing. Which of these two tendencies will 

251 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

be the stronger? Question marks upon ques- 
tion marks ! 

As far as Germany is concerned, to be sure, 
it seems most probable that the reactionary 
influences of the war time will be entirely out- 
weighed by the liberalizing ones. The spirit 
of discipline was, after all, at home there. 
The spirit of brotherhood came like a revela- 
tion, in the August days, and gave to the 
nation such a miraculous unity of spirit that 
its blessing will never be entirely lost. Cer- 
tainly the conservative forces can proudly 
claim that they have organized Germany's 
successes in the war. Even the reactionary 
Agrarian party would have the right to say 
that its conservative policy of protective 
tariffs on the fruits of the field has been 
justified by the events of the war. If the 
liberals had had their way with their demand 
for free trade for grain in the interest of the 
industrial population, farming would have 
been as much reduced as in England, and Ger- 
many would have been entirely unable to 
escape starvation, when it was forced to de- 
pend upon its own resources. But louder 
still will be the justified claim of the greatest 

252 



TOMORROW 

party in the German parliament, of the Social- 
ists. They have been maltreated by the 
prejudices of public opinion, they were de- 
nounced as "traitors" to the fatherland, and 
now they have shown that their patriotism is 
not surpassed by any party. They will be re- 
ceived cordially as comrades in the civic 
battles of peace. Their new influence alone 
will be sufficient to brush aside the cobwebs 
of bureaucracy in the Germany of tomorrow. 
And what will the new day bring to Amer- 
ica ? The fancy of the first days that America 
might stand aside as a mere spectator, un- 
shaken by the European earthquake, has 
slowly been dispelled. The American indus- 
tries are crippled, while those of Germany are 
flourishing, and a thousand times more unem- 
ployed are seeking work in New York than in 
Berlin. The world is one, and great distress 
anywhere means suffering everywhere. But 
what will come tomorrow f Conflicts of hopes 
and fears are filling the air. Who can foresee 
whether it will be storm or sunshine? We 
hear from optimists that whoever wins, all 
Europe will be exhausted from the war and 
America alone will be the winner. Europe 

253 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

with its fifty million dollars daily war budget 
will no longer be able to compete with the 
inexhaustible resources of undisturbed Amer- 
ica, and in the markets of the world, the com- 
merce of the United States will have no seri- 
ous rivals. It sounds tempting: yet can we 
forget that by far the greatest markets of the 
world and by far the best customers were in 
those exhausted countries of Europe. "We 
hear from pessimists that whoever wins, the 
winner must be the next enemy of America. 
If England is able to crush Germany, its naval 
power will have such absolute command of 
the sea that it must interfere with the natural 
development of America's oversea trade, and 
the conflict would become unavoidable. If, 
on the other hand, Germany wins, it will seek 
to develop its colonial possessions and try to 
seize territory in South America. The viola- 
tion of the Monroe Doctrine would immedi- 
ately lead to a clash of arms. Such pessi- 
mism seems utterly groundless and the future 
would look bright if all misgivings could be 
so easily recognized as unfounded. If the 
Allies really win, Russia will be the power 
which profits most, and England's full atten- 

254 



TOMORROW 

tion will be absorbed by the threatening 
conflict with the strengthened Russia, which 
can hardly wait to break into India. 

But there is still less reason for fear if 
Germany wins. As the president of the 
Reichstag said solemnly: "From the blood- 
soaked battlefields will spring a lasting peace 
for us." Germany knows exactly that any 
colonizing efforts in the American continent 
would mean a war, and Germany will never 
seek war. Houston Stuart Chamberlain, the 
most thorough English observer of the Ger- 
man people, writes truthfully: 

My testimony is this. In all Germany there has 
been in the last forty-three years not a single man 
who wanted war: whoever claims the opposite is 
simply lying, consciously or unconsciously. . . . 
William II had no more sincere wish than to be 
able to say on his deathbed: "I have secured un- 
broken peace to my country; history will call me 
the emperor of peace." But if God gives victory 
to Germany and Austria, a perfect, overwhelming 
victory — we all must hope for it, even we who are 
not Germans, if the welfare and the culture of 
civilized mankind stand higher for us than na- 
tional vanity — then, but only then, Germany will 
enjoy a century of peace, and the wish of the great 

255 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

king, whom his peers on foreign thrones have so 
often deceived, will become true after all. It will 
become true more gloriously than he had foreseen. 
He will be called the emperor of peace, as he and 
his army will then indeed have brought to the 
world true peace. 

If the victorious Germany should think of 
colonies, they certainly would not be in the 
sphere of American interests. But he would 
anyhow be a bad social psychologist who 
would not foresee that after this war the 
energies of Germany will be so fully focused 
on the inner development of its European 
domain that the colonial wishes will claim a 
small part of the public attention. 

The psychology of the situation suggests 
rather that if the United States, abstracting 
from its troubles with Mexico, comes into 
armed struggle, it will be neither with Eng- 
land nor with Germany but with Japan. "With 
the opening of the Panama Canal the great 
problem of the supremacy of the Pacific has 
been definitely set before mankind, and 
Japan's strength has been multiplied by the 
war, whoever wins. Yet generations may 
pass before that great contest of Orient and 

256 



TOMORROW 

Occident breaks out, as it may be that Japan's 
proud energies will turn first to the Chinese, 
to the French, to the English and to the Dutch 
possessions in Asia, since she has seized the 
German ones. Thus the danger of an Ameri- 
can war is extremely slight ; and yet the ques- 
tion whether America is to strengthen its 
armament or to disarm still further will be 
on the docket tomorrow. The most truly 
American arguments probably speak against 
new armies and new battleships. It is an 
unspeakable pity that the American nation 
by its desire to profit from the European war 
has created the most dangerous argument in 
favor of a future militarism, which is super- 
fluous for America. Hundreds of factories 
have quickly been turned into producers of 
ammunition and armament. No plant in 
Pittsburgh is working full time today but 
those which have been turned into feeders of 
war. It is not probable that these gigantic 
plants, adjusted to the needs of the great- 
est war, will stop their wheels when the 
pipes of peace give the signal. They will 
remain perpetual sources of supply of the 
means for human destruction, and their 

257 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

lobby will crush every peaceful desire in 
Congress. 

America's political position in the world 
does not and will not depend upon its strength 
in war. Its domain is safe and no cannon 
balls will be aimed toward the Woolworth 
Building. Its prosperity too is secured by 
the incomparable treasures of the land. But 
its position among the nations of the world 
will depend upon its success or failure as a 
moral leader. There can be no doubt that 
the great European war offered to the Ameri- 
can nation a unique opportunity to rise to 
such leadership and to become truly the ar- 
biter. The President saw it clearly. The 
future will recognize it as one of the greatest 
historic mistakes of the nation that it did not 
follow its leader but threw the glorious prize 
away. Those who read the European papers, 
especially the German, Austrian, French and 
English newspapers and magazines, and do 
not see only their distorted reflections in the 
American press, must become aware that the 
talk about American mediation has slowly 
become fainter and has now died out, while 
the Pope appears the one man above the 

258 



TOMOKROW 

parties. He alone has declared from the 
start that both sides are equally worthy of 
mankind's respect and that under no circum- 
stances must either side be humiliated. 

The average German sees in the American 
nation today the one from which it has most 
to fear, since the American munitions of war 
are practically making the battle against Ger- 
many possible. Does he exaggerate the case? 
Certainly not. Few men in America know 
the world situation better than Colonel Har- 
vey, and few are more imbittered against the 
barbarian Germans, "the enemies of civiliza- 
tion." In his momentous letter to the editor 
of the London Times reprinted in the March 
number of the North American Review he 
says in unmistakable words: "I wonder if 
your people in common with your govern- 
ment and of course yourself, are fully aware 
that their allied forces are drawing their 
rifles, their cartridges and their munitions of 
war from our factories and that but for the 
supply thus obtained they could hardly hope 
ever to triumph." But even if the Times and 
the government were not aware of this un- 
deniable fact, the German nation is now aware 

259 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

of it to the last man. Everybody there asks 
himself : why does not America feel the moral 
impulse to shorten the war by forbidding the 
export of weapons to all belligerents ? 

He may be mistaken, but he sees only two 
possible answers. Either the nation does not 
want to be neutral and insists on this export 
because it knows that only the Allies can 
profit from it and not their opponents, and 
that it thus has the power to fight the battles 
of the Allies without officially declaring war, 
or, the nation is politically indifferent and 
considers the commercial profit more impor- 
tant than all the striving for peace which has 
been its perpetual programme. But whether 
partiality or commercialism, neither motive 
can possibly combine with a position of moral 
leadership. In view of this export of arms, 
what does the charity to the suffering Bel- 
gians or Poles amount to, if as a neutral 
Swedish paper wrote last week "all that 
America did for suffering Europeans is less 
than a three per cent, discount on the net 
profits to be expected from the sale of muni- 
tions of war"? 

But the most unexpected feature of the 

260 



TOMORROW 

situation is that the Allies, who profit from 
this American anti-Germanism, hardly hide in 
their own papers and magazines their lack of 
moral sympathy with America's transactions. 
Where they speak for home consumption, 
they leave no doubt that they see only selfish 
motives in American policies, even where 
they are exclusively to their advantage. 
Could ever such injustice have developed if 
every American had remained loyal to the 
noble declaration of the President? Only one 
thing more would have been needed to protect 
the country against this lowering in the judg- 
ment of the world. American sober intelli- 
gence ought to have resisted the calumnies 
which the English censor furthered and ought 
to have insisted on seeing the cables which 
impartial Americans sent home. Colonel 
Emerson, the famous American war corre- 
spondent, who really saw the events in the 
west and the east, sent seventy-eight cable- 
grams in the first months in which public opin- 
ion was being formed. Only three of them 
went through unchanged; all three spoke of 
German reverses. A fourth went through, but 
was so garbled by the censor that the news 

261 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

favorable to Germany was turned into its 
exact opposite; and the seventy-four other 
cablegrams all of which would have awaked 
sympathy and friendly understanding for the 
German side, were all suppressed in England 
and not one of them reached New York. The 
English and French papers are hardly mask- 
ing the fact that most of the denunciations of 
Germany are written only for the neutral 
countries, and what they really mean is for 
the one greatest neutral country, where the 
indignation must be kept alive. 

Yet may it not be said here too that the 
question of the tomorrow cannot be answered 
today? It may be that the American nation 
will stick to its present role and will not free 
itself from the temper of the hour. But it 
may be that before the sun sets over the last 
battlefield of this war, the great change will 
have come, signs of which suggest themselves 
daily more under the surface. For reasons 
which are evident, the so-called society layer 
of the nation will be the last which will give 
attention to impartial evidence, and yet even 
their stubborn resolve not to listen is be- 
ginning to melt in New York, Philadelphia, 

262 



TOMORROW 

Washington and Chicago. Much more im- 
portant, however, is the stand of the great 
thinking middle-class. You cannot fool all 
the people all the time. They are tired of 
their papers and disgusted with the way in 
which they have been misled. But most 
promising of all signs, the youth of America 
shows the right moral fiber. Throughout the 
country the young men and women have been 
reluctant to follow in the unneutral path of 
their parents. The student body has been 
splendid everywhere. The purity of their 
youth and their love of fairness in sport have 
kept alive their sense of justice. They feel 
the thrill of the great time and they instinc- 
tively grasp the true meaning of a gigantic 
struggle between two noble nations, each of 
which deserves the highest respect of man- 
kind. Theirs is the true voice of tomorrow. 
America's public opinion will change just 
as England's changed with regard to Amer- 
ica's Civil War. England treated Lincoln 
exactly as America is treating the German 
emperor today. Who dared to repeat those 
calumnies of America's great president a few 
years later? England did its utmost to 

263 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

strengthen the Confederates against the 
Union, as everybody who wants to be in the 
social stream tries to back the Allies today 
against Central Europe. Gladstone boasted 
of his purchase of Confederate bonds, just as 
American bankers today do their best to fill 
the treasuries of the Allies and indirectly to 
help toward the starvation of the German 
people. The day will come when America 
will look on all these un-American actions 
exactly as England very soon felt about its 
anti- Americanism. The day may be nearer 
than the editors imagine and suddenly the 
spirit of true neutrality may take hold of 
the nation and may inspire its noblest con- 
science and may raise it to the height of moral 
leadership to which it seemed destined in the 
first hour of the European strife. I trust 
this will be the glorious tomorrow which will 
destroy all those European suspicions. 

Finally, what will the next day bring to 
the Americans of German descent? For the 
American nation as a whole the experience 
during this war time may be not without hard- 
ship, but for those millions of German- Amer- 
icans, it is the bitterest tragedy. The ground 

264 



TOMORROW 

on which, they stood trembled and broke: 
abysses are around them. Their daily com- 
panions have turned into their persecutors, 
their intimate friends into their adversaries. 
The soil on which they had built their homes 
and for which they had forsworn their 
fatherland has become foreign land to them, 
as they feel that they are no longer welcome 
to their neighbors. Yet it is the land which 
their industry has plowed and to which their 
loyalty is unshaken. They want to struggle 
against the cruel attacks which are hurled 
against the beloved land of their fathers and 
brothers, but bravery before the enemy is 
easier than bravery before the neutral. In 
the battle-line where every fellow-countryman 
is on the same side, the one great enthusiasm 
carries away everybody, and the suggestive 
influence easily molds heroes. But to fight 
with words and to stand courageously for 
one's conviction when it means to be despised 
by one's fellow-workers and to be intrigued 
against and to lose the social position for 
wife and children which has been slowly 
gained through a lifework and to be deprived 
of all the little success which has been won in 
18 265 



THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

faithful service — that demands more courage 
than the battle-line. Since the slaves were 
freed, no people in this land have struggled 
against their chains with such bitter tears as 
the German-Americans in the last seven 
months. 

It was most natural for them to consider 
whether their cause might be helped by 
strictly political action. More than five mil- 
lion American voters feel themselves bound 
by blood ties to Central Europe. German 
victory is their silent hope: American neu- 
trality their only prayer. Yet these five 
millions felt that they are powerless because 
their political energies never have been con- 
centrated in common action. They are scat- 
tered, and their tendencies were divergent 
until the gigantic calamity made them feel 
that they were one after all. They had never 
interested themselves in practical politics. 
While there were one hundred and seventy 
congressmen of Irish descent in Washington, 
there have never been more than a handful of 
German-Americans. Of course, those Irish- 
men do not form a party ; and no one dreamed 
of creating a German party beside the Demo- 

266 



TOMORROW 

crats and Republicans. Nothing could be 
more ruinous to American life than a House 
of Representatives who represent only racial 
groups of the country. Yet those one hun- 
dred and seventy Irishmen mean an influence 
by which the demands of the Irish- Americans 
can secure respect and fulfilment. If the 
German element, backed by a united organi- 
zation, should become a serious factor in the 
practical political life of the nation, if those 
who preach hatred against Germany were de- 
feated in elections wherever possible, if a 
hundred or more Democrats and Republicans 
of German descent were carried into the 
House, a repetition of that unspeakable moral 
misery of the twenty million German- Ameri- 
cans would become impossible. 

Will these wishes be fulfilled? They will 
hardly lead to success, unless the sentiment 
and conviction is unanimous, and it is hardly 
in the German character not to have split off 
factions with special wishes and special ideas. 
Objections to such a plan, of course, lie on the 
surface. Efforts to join the German and 
Irish vote in a movement against a too fer- 
vent pro-English policy of the country have 

267 



THE PEACE AND AMEEICA 

been started repeatedly. But those who 
warned the German-Americans against such 
an alliance were surely not their worst 
friends. They felt in those peaceful years 
that the friendship of Germany, England and 
America ought to be the goal for the foreign 
policy and the friendliest intimacy of the 
German- Americans and the Anglo-Americans 
would be the most favorable condition for 
the cultural influence of the German- Ameri- 
can element. It is not surprising that this 
opinion still makes itself felt and brings an 
element of discord into the discussion of the 
plans. This opposition which was wise in the 
past is probably bad policy today, because it 
has always appealed only to a narrow set, 
and the hour of danger demands solutions 
which appeal to the masses. It is a signifi- 
cant symptom that those who took the stand 
against the political organization of the Ger- 
man-Americans found the wildest applause 
in those dailies and weeklies which are the 
spokesmen of the most malicious hatred 
against Germany and Austria. The tomor- 
row of the German-Americans remains an- 
other great open question. 

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TOMORROW 

But whatever their political task, will their 
cultural mission be changed? The more the 
American nation has understood that its cul- 
ture is to grow from all its racial elements, 
the more the German-Americans have felt 
that they are true Americans only if they 
contribute the best and soundest and noblest 
of their German traditions. Therefore they 
have kept the German language alive and 
cultivated German literature and music, Ger- 
man customs and traditions, and remained in 
contact with the new German life of the 
fatherland. This made them at the same 
time the natural mediators between Germany 
and the United States, and the cordial friend- 
ship of the two lands was their constant care. 
The Germans at home and many a German 
here cooperated with the German- Americans ; 
above all, the best American elements, grate- 
ful for the gifts of German education and 
scholarship and of all which German culture 
had given to them, entered heartily into these 
endeavors. They had never been more prom- 
ising and more successful than in recent 
years. Since the beginning of this century 
the official contact between the two nations 

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took more and more a cultural aspect. The 
Congress of Arts and Sciences at the St. 
Louis World's Fair, which brought a hundred 
German scholars to these shores, Prince 
Henry's visit, the institution of the exchange 
professors, the Germanic Museum, the Ger- 
manistic societies in New York, Boston, Chi- 
cago and elsewhere, the foundation of the 
Amerika-Institut in Berlin, all were only 
symbols and symptoms of a cultural harmony 
which we thought would last forever. And 
we who have devoted every heart-beat of our 
energy to this friendship from land to land 
feel as if a new time were coming, and like 
the old gladiators who were to die, nothing is 
left to us but a morituri te salutamus. Ger- 
man culture, which has given many of the best 
impulses to American life through half a cen- 
tury, is suddenly nothing but an object of 
ridicule. And the echo sounds from Germany : 
on all sides it is heard that the Germans will 
never again return to their whole-hearted, 
cordial internationalism of culture which the 
world has rejected with such ingratitude. 
The Germans say rightly that it was always 
their aim to be in contact with the culture of 

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all foreign nations, but that they tried more 
earnestly and more sincerely to gain the cul- 
tural friendship of America than of any land. 
But can this really be the last word? In the 
imbittered hour the quiet work may appear 
lost and the highest values destroyed ; the day 
seems to be given over to the intellectual mob 
from the penny-a-liner who writes about the 
German Crown Prince's thefts in the French 
castles to the dollar-a-liner who declaims on 
the collapse of German scholarship. But 
that will not be and cannot be the American 
sentiment of tomorrow. From the blood- 
soaked battlefields of the intellect, a lasting 

peace will spring, too. 

# # # # 

Last week the Germans and many German- 
Americans of Boston sat down at a banquet 
truly unusual. On a moonlit night we came 
together on board the famous steamer Kron- 
prinzessin Cecilie of the North German 
Lloyd, which, together with the Amerika and 
the Cleveland of the Hamburg-American 
Line, is interned for the war time in Boston 
harbor. The wonderful halls of the ship 
gleamed in their festival beauty, the stewards 

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THE PEACE AND AMERICA 

served, the ship's orchestra played, as if it 
were a gay dinner in midocean. I had been 
asked to speak a serious word to the men and 
women who filled the large dining-hall. I 
spoke to them about the deepest meaning of 
the war, of the dangers and the blessings of 
the great hour, of the fears and the hopes, 
and I ended my long speech, I think, with 
about these words. 

"Beautiful have been these festive hours, 
and yet, my friends, have they not been 
haunted by strange emotions 1 Every one of 
us has sat many a time at such captains' 
dinners on shipboard when the pennants 
were gaily fluttering in the wind and when 
every pulse-beat of the engines brought us 
nearer to the harbor of our wishes. Today 
the engines are still, and this silence op- 
presses us as if it were a symbol of our day. 
It reminds us that in the peaceful past these 
ships plying back and forth between the 
United States and Germany were the bearers 
of abundant good will. Every one of us and 
every passenger who crossed the ocean on 
them was more than a passenger. He went, 
knowingly or not, as an envoy of friendship. 

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TOMORROW 

Everyone helped to dispel the European 
prejudices about America and the American 
errors about Europe, everyone brought the 
cordial regard of his home to the foreign bor- 
der. It is only fitting that the ships lie idle 
at the pier, as those good wishes and hearty 
feelings which they carried are paralyzed, 
and estrangement and bitterness against 
Germany have taken their place in the Amer- 
ican mind. No : we cannot forget that on the 
other side of this harbor, in this very hour 
of the night, piles of ammunition and hun- 
dreds of horses for the war are being loaded 
that they may go out tomorrow over the sea 
for the relentless fight against Germany. 

But, my friends, we all know the mighty 
engines of this ship will throb again, the 
pennants will laugh again on the homeward 
way ; and this may happen much sooner than 
we expect tonight in the distress of this win- 
ter. But when the blessing of peace comes 
and the chains of the enslaved ships are 
broken, then let us be fair, and let us pledge 
even today that we will not yield to hasty 
and superficial emotions, but will see the 
great things great. Let us forget all hatred 

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and let us rather think of the tremendous 
ideal gain this war has meant for the whole 
of Europe in spife of all the suffering. 
There is no one country in this war which 
will not be nearer to high ideals. The storm 
will have blown away the foam and the scum 
with which in modern times the true values 
have been covered. There was too much 
sham and too much ostentation in the world, 
too much slavery to man's own selfish wishes ; 
and this slavery has been abolished. The 
idea of loyalty and devotion and self-sacri- 
fice, the belief in higher demands than mere 
pleasure and comfort, the faith in the eter- 
nal values, have once more taken hold of old 
Europe. Such a prize can never be won 
without paying for it in suffering and tears. 
But we must and will forget also the suf- 
fering which came to us here on American 
soil, to us who had put our loving faith in 
the American-German friendship. In the 
pain of our surprise we may feel as if the 
majority of the American people is swayed 
by passionate hatred against the Germany 
which we love and that it has done a wrong 
which the Germans and all the American 

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TOMORROW 

sympathizers with Germany ought never to 
forgive. But no sentiment is more to be con- 
demned. We have no right to overlook the 
unfortunate events which almost forced the 
American public to form cruelly unjust judg- 
ments. Everyone knows today how the clay 
of public opinion was molded by English 
masters of the craft. In those first weeks 
after the cables were cut, a firm attitude was 
taken, and a mind which is made up does not, 
nay cannot, be opened to the voice of neutral 
truth. It was not really ill will; it was the 
best will, pitifully perverted. Our task is 
not to accuse, but to understand the misun- 
derstanding. The time is near when fair 
America will grasp the historic meaning and 
the pathos of the great struggle and will re- 
spect alike all the nations which offered their 
all in the defense of their national ideals. 
We understand why this respect was with- 
held from the one people which has the clean- 
est conscience and we know that with the 
respect will come admiration and love. We 
shall forget and we shall love America no 
less. The anchors of these ships will soon 
be weighed, and I hope heartily that as be- 

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fore they will make their friendly calls at 
Boulogne and Cherbourg, at Plymouth and 
Southampton. The welcome of England and 
France will not fail them when they come as 
the great messengers of cordial friendship 
from the American to the German shore, and 
carry at their bow the radiant banner of 
peace." 



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